By Dave Lahr: You got to fill a little bit sorry for Floyd Mayweather Jr. (40-0, 25 KO’s) right about now, because just after he beat Juan Manuel Marquez (50-5-1, 37 KO’s) by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision by the scores of 120-107, 119-108 and 118-109 last night at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada, HBO interviewer pulled a couple of surprises on Mayweather when he brought Shane Mosley into the picture.
It’s unclear whether this was a planned event by Kellerman or not. But whatever the case, Mosley was waiting right there for when Kellerman brought him up as a potential opponent for Mayweather, in place of the smallish Manny Pacquiao. As soon as Kellerman mentioned Mosley’s name, as if by magic, Mosley came up to Kellerman and Mayweather from the right of the camera and started saying, “How about it, Floyd, let’s do it.”
Mayweather looked sheepish and very uncomfortable with Mosley right in front of him and said” Shane Mosley is one hell of a fighter. I’m not scared of him. I’m not scared of nobody. However, Mayweather’s face appeared to show the opposite emotion from what he was talking about, because he looked afraid. Shane then said “We just want to get it on, that’s all. The fans want to see a good fight. Let’s get this on.”
Floyd then, looking tongue tied, said “It’s like this. Do I interrupt you when you do an interview. Don’t disrespect me.” Mayweather clearly wasn’t going to directly address Mosley about wanting a fight. This is the same tactic that Mayweather chose to use when Kellerman asked him about his weight, to which Mayweather said “I don’t want to talk about weight. I’m here to talk about my victory.”
Kellerman was trying to get Mayweather to speak about him coming in at 146 instead of the agreed upon catch weight of 144. The two fighters had agreed on that weight because Marquez, who only recently moved up to lightweight, would be moving up two entire divisions to fight Mayweather at welterweight for this fight. The plan was for Mayweather to accommodate him in a small way by fighting Marquez at 144, which really wasn’t much of a handicap for Marquez when it comes down to it.
Marquez, for his part, came in at 142, two pounds under the catch weight limit. It’s unknown what Mayweather weighed last night during the fight because he didn’t let anyone know. However, Mayweather appeared to weight in the neighborhood of the low 150s by looking at him. Kellerman then asked Mayweather about his choice of opponents, asking him why he chose to fight Marquez.
Mayweather, looking as if this was another question that he wasn’t going to give Kellerman an answer to, then snatched the microphone out of Kellerman’s hand, saying “I’m just going to do the talking. You [Kellerman] do too much talking.” Kellerman, sensing that Mayweather was going to go into a monologue about this or that without answering his questions, motioned for the interview to be stopped.
It seemed like Mayweather wasn’t going to have any part in talking about weight, his reasons for selecting a small fighter like Marquez and whether he would be interested or not in fighting Mosley. By not answering these questions, Mayweather didn’t come off well at all in the interview and it, at least for me, seemed to take away much of what he got from his performance last night.
By the time the interview was over, I felt that Mayweather had handpicked Marquez because he was smaller and less threatening than Mosley. I wish Mayweather had at least stood up and answered Kellerman’s questions because I would have felt a lot better about him if he had let us in on his reasoning for fighting Marquez instead of someone his own size like Mosley and why he came in overweight.
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