By Sean McDaniel: As of today, Floyd Mayweather still hasn’t signed the contract to fight WBA welterweight champion Shane Mosley for their May 1st fight in Las Vegas. Mosley, 38, quickly signed the contract as soon as it was offered to him, and is more than ready to fight Mayweather. However, since that time, five days ago, there hasn’t been a peep heard from Mayweather and there are signs that his promoters are beginning to worry that Mayweather may have had second thoughts about taking the fight.
Let’s say that Mayweather does back out of this fight because he wants to not take the risk that he’ll get hurt or possibly beat and ruin his chance at a huge payday against Manny Pacquiao in the future. Would Mayweather’s reputation take a hit in the boxing community or would boxing fans be forgiving of him and see the reasoning behind Mayweather ducking the Mosley fight.
You can’t disagree that the Mosley bout will be a very tough fight for Mayweather. Floyd hasn’t faced an opponent like this ever in his career. When Mayweather did take risky fights, it was against fighters like Diego Corrales and Jose Luis Castillo a long time ago when Mayweather was a lot younger and a lot smaller as well.
Mosley isn’t just an average fighter. He’s a former pound-for-pound number #1 fighter and he’s still fighting at a high level as he showed in his last fight a year ago, a 9th round stoppage over Antonio Margarito. Mosley has been out of the ring for the past year, but you can bet that he’ll still be plenty good come May 1st. Mayweather isn’t going to be able to dominate Mosley like he did his last opponent, the hand-picked Juan Manuel Marquez, who was too small to really compete with Mayweather.
The real question is if Mayweather does opt to back out of the Mosley fight for fear of being beaten, would boxing fans be willing to see Mayweather fight in the future? I can imagine this turning off a ton of boxing fans if Mayweather does decide not to go through with the Mosley fight. Potentially, this could cause people to doubt Mayweather and see him as a cherry picker.
Mayweather already has a high number of boxing fans who see him as a fighter who has ducked dangerous fights during his career. If Mayweather avoids Mosley, who at 38 is up there in age, it would give some of them more evidence that Mayweather is avoiding the best fighters in boxing, at least those in his own weight class.
Marquez is certainly a good fighter for his weight class, lightweight, but he is in no way a welterweight, which is the weight that he fought Mayweather at. That was a good victory for Mayweather, but it wasn’t nearly as impressive as it would have been if Mayweather had fought someone good in his own weight class instead. With Manny Pacquiao constantly moving up in weight and taking on the best fighters in each division as he gradually moves up, you would think that Mayweather would want to take a page from the Pacquiao playbook and fight someone bigger than him like Paul Williams.
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