By Jason Kim: It seems that the bout between WBA Shane Mosley (46-5, 39 KO’s) and former International Boxing Federation welterweight champion Joshua Clottey (35-3, 20 KO’s) won’t be taking place on December 26th, like it was originally thought it would be. The problem, according to the LA Times, is that HBO doesn’t want the fight to take place on December 26th, the reason being that it’s the day after Christmas.
Instead, the network is looking to push the bout into the new year, some time in January 2010. That’s probably not the type of good news that the 38-year-old Mosley wanted to hear, because he hasn’t fought since January, and if he has to wait until January 2010 for a fight with Clottey, it will have meant that Mosley will have been out of the ring for an entire year.
That’s probably not how Mosley had foreseen things after taking on the dangerous Antonio Margarito and beating him by a 9th round stoppage in January. It had to have taken a tremendous amount of courage for Mosley to fight Margarito in the first place, because up until then, Margarito had been on a three fight win streak and stopped Kermit Cintron and Miguel Cotto in his two fights going into the bout with Mosley.
Instead of the win over Margarito opening doors for Mosley, it made him essentially a pariah to the other top fighters in the welterweight division, who wanted nothing to do with Mosley, probably because of his good he looked in beating Margarito. With no one wanting to fight him, Mosley wasted a good amount of time going after Manny Pacquiao.
One could hardly blame Mosley for attempting to get that fight, because Freddie Roach, Pacquiao’s trainer, had hinted about wanting Mosley as an opponent for Pacquiao. However, it the decision wasn’t up to Roach, as Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s promoter, opted to take the bigger money – and some would say the safer fight – against Cotto instead. By then, Mosley had been out of the ring for a long time and was desperate to get any good fighter in the ring, just to get a payday and keep busy.
Mosley attempted to get a fight with Zab Judah, but he wanted a lot of money, more than what Golden Boy Promotions were interested in paying for his services. And finally when things were looking really bad, Clottey, another one of Arum’s fighters, was found for a fight against Mosley.
It wasn’t the opponent that Mosley wanted, to be sure, because Clottey is a tough fighter, but not a particularly popular one. However, it was either take on Clottey or settle for one of the lesser unknown contenders in the WBA. That option wasn’t appealing because HBO would likely not be interested in seeing Mosley fight a little known top welterweight contender.
They did, however, want to show Mosley vs. Clottey. Now, with this latest bad news, it looks as if Mosley will have to wait a little while longer before he defends his title against Clottey. The only good thing about this is that it will likely be only a month more that Mosley has to wait, but even a month for him must seem like a long time at this point.
Clottey won’t be an easy fight for Mosley. With the time away from the ring, plus Mosley’s age, you can’t tell how this fight will turn out for Mosley. Clottey has a lot of power and speed and will make it really hard on Mosley no matter how much he has left.
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