By Dan Ambrose: How do you sell a fight where one of the fighters is pushing 40, hasn’t won a fight in over two years, and is an incredibly nice guy? This is the predicament we’re in with the upcoming pay-per-view bout between Manny Pacquiao and 39-year-old Shane Mosley. It’s just hard to get excited about the fight because you really can’t see Mosley winning the fight other than maybe getting lucky with a big punch in the first four or five rounds. Mosley has never been a big knockout puncher.

Sure, he’s scored a lot of knockouts in the past but those have come from an accumulation of blows where he’s been beating on his opponents for many rounds. Mosley is not a Julian Jackson type of one-punch knockout artist or anything close to it. His only chance of winning this fight is if Pacquiao stands directly in front of him and stays there all fight long without throwing many punches of his own. You know that’s not going to happen and that’s why this is such a bad mismatch.

How can you get excited about a fight where Pacquiao is being matched up against someone mainly because he’s well known and not because he’s been fighting well as of late. Mosley was beaten last year by Floyd Mayweather Jr. and then looked dreadful in getting a questionable draw against Sergio Mora. That tells you all you need to know about Mosley. How can they sell this fight with Mosley looking so terrible? I know it’s a pay per view bout going for $54.99 but I don’t see this fight as being PPV worthy.

With Mosley fighting so poorly and given his long time period between wins, I see this as a free bout. Technically, Mosley is a contender but he’s a contender on the slide, not someone that’s coming into the fight behind a series of wins like most contenders are when they’re given a shot at a title.