Today (Sunday) is May 1 and marks one full year since Sugar Shane Mosley, now less than a week away from a fight against Manny Pacquiao, dropped a one-sided, unanimous decision to unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Mayweather’s legal problems in Las Vegas linger on but I wanted to flash back to where I was when the Mosley-Mayweather bout took place.
I was with Hammerin’ Hermie Rivera, the WOFO (Wise Old Filipino Owl) at a small hotel in Pacman’s hometown of General Santos City as we watched Shane and Floyd duel on a big screen TV. My main reason for my trip to Pacland was to cover Manny’s Congressional campaign in Sarangani Province.
So, on a typically hot Gensan Sunday afternoon with the ice cold San Migs flowing, our group was stunned when Mosley stung Mayweather with a booming right hand in the second round.
Mayweather was not close to hitting the canvas but his knees knocked and wobbled briefly before recovering his composure and equilibrium.
Late that night, Rivera and I made the nightly pilgrimage over to Pacquiao’s billiards center.
I asked Pacquaio if he saw Mayweather wiggle and wobble and he smiled affirmatively.
What happens, I said, if you crack the undefeated American like that?
“If I hit him like that, I will finish him,” Pacquiao said.
Coming from any other fighter’s lips such words could be taken as bragging or bravado but Pacman does not indulge in either.
Now we come full circle, 53 weeks later and it’s Manny’s turn to try to do what Mayweather, who did dominate the rest of that bout, did not do.
Coach Freddie Roach has “commanded” Pacman to do what no other Mosley foe has done, to stop him.
It’s a tall order, given the physical strength, including the durable chin, Mosley still possesses.
I say it won’t happen. I see Mosley taking an old fashioned whupping but going the 36 minute route.
If Pacquiao proves me wrong, it won’t be the first time.
I wonder what the guys at the pool hall are saying.
