By Chris Williams: Unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. (40-0, 25 KO’s) is feeling no stress as he prepares for his May 1st battle against 38-year-old World Boxing Association welterweight champion Shane Mosley (46-5, 39 KO’s) at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Mayweather, who turned 33 on February 24th, says in an article by David Mayor of The Grand Rapids Press at Mlive.com “It comes down to two things: Who’s the smarter fighter and who has the best timing?” Mayweather will be facing an equally fast and powerful fighter for one of the few times in his career in taking on Mosley.
Even though Shane appears to have lost a step or two in the past five years through aging, he still is very fast and hits hard. Mosley is easily the best opponent that Mayweather has faced since perhaps his two fights against Jose Luis Castillo. Some fans might think that Oscar De La Hoya or Juan Manuel Marquez were Mayweather’s best opponents of his career, but De La Hoya was too old and Marquez too small for either of them to have a serious chance at beating Mayweather.
Mosley has a chance because of his speed, power and aggressiveness. He’s also the larger fighter at 5’9” compared to Mayweather’s 5’8” height. This is one of the few fights in Mayweather’s career that he’ll be facing a bigger fighter than him even though it’s only an inch we’re talking about.
Speaking about fighters that Mayweather has beaten during his career, he says “They build these guys up so high, so high, once I beat them, they say, ‘Oh, he really wasn’t all that.’ Once I beat him, he’s not all that. But before I beat him, he was King Kong. So my focus never changes. Do what I do, be happy and stay positive.”
Mayweather is correct about not getting much credit for beating some of his opponents. After he beat the great Juan Manuel Marquez recently, few fans were ready to give Mayweather any credit for the win, instead calling him a cherry picker for fighting Marquez, a lightweight, instead of a bigger fighter like Miguel Cotto, Shane Mosley or Andre Berto. However, you can’t ignore how impressive Mayweather looked in beating Marquez. He basically shut Marquez out in the fight, winning all 12 round of the bout en route to winning the fight by a landslide decision. Until then, no one had ever done that to Marquez before, least of all Manny Pacquiao.
Mayweather says “As for as Shane goes, sometimes things look different from the outside than they do once you get into then squared circle.” Mayweather has a way of making even the best fighters look ordinary. This will probably be the case for his fight against Mosley. Mayweather will likely win easily and could make Mosley look like an old man in beating him. However, the bad part about that happening is that it could make it nearly impossible for a fight against Pacquiao from happening.
If Mayweather looks too good against Mosley, there could be a lot of feet dragging on Pacquiao and his team’s part about fighting Mayweather in the future. I have my doubts that the fight is even possible to be put together. But if Mayweather destroys Mosley, I don’t see there being one chance in a million that a fight can be put together against Pacquiao.
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