By Chris Williams: Undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr. (40-0, 25 KO’s) could end up bringing in big bank tonight in his mega fight against World Boxing Association (WBA) welterweight champion Shane Mosley (46-5, 39 KO’s) at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas. If the fight winds up getting at least 2 million pay-per-view buys, the 33-year-old Mayweather will get the ridiculous amount of $58.5 million for the fight, according to CNN. With that kind of money, why would Mayweather ever need to contemplate fighting WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao?

Of course, that’s the fight that Mayweather is really aiming for, provided he gets by the 38-year-old Mosley tonight. And that’s not a given that Mayweather is going to win this fight, because Mosley is probably the best opponent that Mayweather will have faced in his entire 14-year pro career. When you look at the best fighters that Mayweather has fought during that time, none of them appear to be quite at the level of Mosley. Arguably the best fighters that Mayweather has fought up until this time are as follows: Oscar De La Hoya, Jose Luis Castillo, Ricky Hatton, Zab Judah, Carlos Baldomir, Arturo Gatti, and Diego Corrales. That’s pretty much it.

The other fighters were good, but not at the level of these guys in my estimation. The thing is Mosley is clearly a step up from those fighters. De La Hoya was almost as good as Mosley in his prime, but he wasn’t by the time he fought Mayweather in 2007. And yet, De La Hoya fought Mayweather almost to a standstill. This suggests that Mayweather would have some problems against Mosley unless he’s degraded significantly in the past 15 months that he’s been away from boxing.

Tonight’s fight will likely do at least 2 million PPV buys. Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer is hoping to get 4 million buys. If the Mayweather-Mosley fight generates that many buys, Mayweather will make an ungodly amount of money, perhaps in the $100 million range. That would likely be the biggest payday of any athlete for a single event in the history of sports. Can the fight do that well? I have my doubts. This fight hasn’t really caught on until the last week with boxing fans. A part of that reason is perhaps because of the age and inactivity of Mosley.

He’s getting up there in age and hasn’t had a true mega fight for at least seven years since his second fight with De La Hoya in 2003. Although Mosley has remained active since then, taking on guys like Fernando Vargas, Winky Wright, Luis Collazo, Ricardo Mayorga, Antonio Margarito and Miguel Cotto, Mosley has lacked a big mega star opponent like Mayweather or Pacquiao to keep him in the limelight. Still, the Mayweather vs. Mosley fight will do well and perhaps bring in as many as 2 million PPV buys, but that might be the upper limit of what it will bring in.

Mayweather has already mentioned the possibility of a rematch with Mosley if things go as well as he expects them to. You can understand why. With Pacquiao likely declining Mayweather’s request for him to agree to take Olympic style random blood tests before he will fight him, Mayweather will have few other big named options for him to fight. Besides Mosley, there really isn’t another big named fighter in the welterweight division at this time that boxing fans are excited about.

Andre Berto, the WBC welterweight champion, has looked badly flawed in recent fights and doesn’t have much experience against other big named opponents. In other words, he’s still not that well known and didn’t look spectacular in his last fight. Miguel Cotto has been beaten in two out of his last four fights. Paul Williams is probably too big for Mayweather to want to fight. I think it would be an interesting bout, but Williams probably isn’t well known enough to get Mayweather interested in fighting him. Mayweather already beat Hatton, and WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan is still unknown in the United States. There are really not a lot of options for Mayweather to fight if he wants to get the kind of money that he’ll be bringing in tonight, unless he wants to drop his demands of blood testing for a fight with Pacquiao.