How Can We Make The Most Of Pacquiao vs. Mosley?

By Boxing News - 12/27/2010 - Comments

Image: How Can We Make The Most Of Pacquiao vs. Mosley?By Rod Bautista: We all know by now that Manny Pacquiao is taking on Sugar Shane Mosley on the 7th of May, 2011. Whether we like that decision or not what Pacquiao has to do, is plan for a boxing life without Floyd Mayweather and so should the rest of boxing. We can do our part to help this sport our selves.

When all the dust settles after the Mosley fight there should be a specific amount of time to try to make a Mega Fight happen. How this is done must be carefully planned out. First of all Manny and Top Rank should back Floyd into a corner and publicly state on the record that their camp is willingly allowing random blood testing up to the day of the fight, in effect calling Floyd’s bluff. From that point give him 30 days to sign. With a decisive win over Mosley Manny has to take control and not be held ransom by Golden Boy Promotions (GBP) or Floyd Mayweather coming out and submitting to the tests will completely put the ball in Floyd’s court.

Floyd’s freedom may make this point moot, but at least the general public will know where he stands. If they aren’t already thinking of life without Floyd they have to be or Manny’s legacy will lack the luster that it should, and boxing will be right back where it was three years ago. Therefore the rest of the Welterweight world should ready themselves as well.

Timothy Bradley vs. Devon Alexander is a great qualifying match to. I encourage all you fight fans to actually buy this fight on January 29, 2011, because if the boxing world was smart it would pit the winner of this match against either Andre Berto or Juan Manuel Marquez or the winner of Marquez vs. Berto or any combination of the above. Manny should face whoever comes out of this as the winner. These four fighters need another fight to increase their profile.

Now those of you clamoring for Manny to fight Marquez or Berto should lobby HBO and Top Rank to put that exact match up on the Pacquiao/Mosley under card. I will start by writing in this article as we speak. If it’s not that match up exactly it should be one with one of those two combatants above. Putting one or both of them on the under card will lay the foundation and give the casual fan a taste of who Manny should fight next.

Bottom line is Manny should go on as if Floyd never came back and fight the guys that he would have fought if Floyd had stayed retired. A boxing world without Floyd is still a very vibrant one and us as Fight fans should show the people in control that we demand for better fights to be put on pay per view. Let us make a push for who should be on that under card and let them know with our emails and let’s start with commenting on this article here.

Think about it if we determine who gets exposure on this PPV which will be the most watched and hyped pay per view of the year we can influence future decisions made by HBO and the promoters. This may be a naive and idealistic view, bit I think if we really want to be heard an email campaign or a blogging campaign will make a big statement.

Face it whether you like him or not Manny Pacquiao is the face of boxing and is effectively boxing’s biggest draw, and we only have three maybe four fights left from him. If we can’t make the Mayweather fight happen, and I’m of the opinion that Floyd never really wanted it, we have to make sure that not only Manny but we as the true boxing fans maje and get the most out of Pacquiao’s last few fights. Let’s put Marquez vs. Berto or Martinez vs. Anyone, or the winner of Montiel vs. Donaire, or maybe a heavyweight fight and jump start that division again.

I’m asking you so called experts to help me out and focus on who we should push to be on the biggest under card of the year. Remember it was truly an under card match that launched the current UFC wave of popularity. Forrest Griffin vs. Stephan Bonnar was truly on the under card of the first Ultimate Fighter Finale. The quality of that fight propelled the UFC into the Stratosphere. In case you didn’t remember and most people don’t Rich Franklin and Ken Shamrock were the main event.

My point is we need to showcase our young talent because we do have it in spades. We need to capture the imagination of the “American” public, and what better place than on the under card of the highest profile fight of the year. I’ve been a boxing fan for over thirty years or as long as I can remember. I remember watching boxing on Sunday Afternoons or on replays during Wide World of Sports. Boxing was main stream. Most of our stars today wouldn’t get mugged walking down the street let alone get any recognition. The American public should know who Andre Berto, Andre Ward or Timothy Bradley should be, just like they knew Thomas Hearns, Sugar Ray Leonard or Marvin Haglar were. Can you imagine we didn’t have dozens of sports only networks on tv and buying pay per views or closed circuit programs was way more difficult, but Boxing was very much a big part of American culture.

Now more kids Know GSP then they do PBF, trust me they do. Go to any middle school and do a quick survey. Remember 15 years ago MMA was banned in most of the USA and only hard core fight fans knew what it was, now its sad to say that Boxing and MMA have switched places in America. I say that because in most of the world Boxing is still the number 1 combat sport, that’s why there are more international stars. The reason why is Dana White and the UFC make sure that their fights are not only good ones, but they have to please the hard core and casual fans as well. We need to have more of a say like in MMA. We need to take more control.

So let’s do it let’s make this under card ours. Comment on this article and we’ll get the ball rolling. I’ll list the most popular answers and publish them in the next couple of days and we’ll determine what we’ll send HBO and Top Rank.

I may be off base, but I think we have to put it all together and literally put our money where our mouths are. Instead of griping about it and arguing back and forth, let’s show these bastards we mean business.



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