By Jim Dower: Floyd Mayweather Jr. looked for once in his life out of his element at yesterdays’ press conference in Manhattan, New York. In 10 of Mayweather’s last 11 fights, he’s been the taller fighter than his opponent. Yesterday, it was the 38-year-old Mosley who was clearly the taller fighter and also seemed to have the bigger frame as well. Additionally, Mayweather has had a huge advantage with his trash talking of opponents recently, getting the better of Oscar De La Hoya, Ricky Hatton and Juan Manuel Marquez.
However, Mosley seemed to hold his own in the trash talking department, standing eye-to-eye with Mayweather at center stage and jawing back and forth with him. At one point during their arguing, Mayweather shoved Mosley. This led to Mosley retaliating with his own bit of shoving. The shoving match quickly led to the stage being flooded with the camps of both fighters trying to separate the two fighters from one another.
Mosley said afterwards “I’m a lot faster and mentally stronger. I kind of pushed him [Mayweather] back a bit. He said, ‘don’t put your hands on me,’ and then we started tussling, so I just grabbed his hands. There’s a lot of money on the line, so there’s no need to do any fighting. But you could see we need to get in there and mix it up.” Indeed, when Mosley grabbed Mayweather’s hands, he seemed to have total control over Mayweather due to his bigger size.
Mayweather couldn’t do much after Mosley grabbed a hold of him. Obviously, this doesn’t tell us what would happen in the ring with both fighters wearing gloves, but it did seem strange to see Mayweather being handled by Mosley during the press conference scuffle. Based on what I saw, I’m giving Mosley the first round of the pre-fight action. Mosley wasn’t intimidated like some of Mayweather’s recent opponents during the press conferences, and actually seemed to have Mayweather looked tentative and unsure of himself when they were in close.
It will be interesting to see how they interact in the other press conferences. Mosley looked mentally stronger than Mayweather during the press conference, and seemed to be the one in control. Whether Mosley can control the actual fight with Mayweather is a different matter. However, I’ve never seen Mayweather look as flustered as he did with Mosley, and this could be a bad sign for Mayweather that he’s finally met his match after 40 fights and 14 years as a pro without a defeat.
Comments are closed.