By Dan Ambrose: It may not matter that Manny Pacquiao is facing a badly over-matched Shane Mosley on May 7th, as boxing fans – the casual variety – will tune into this fight regardless. The only ones that seem to really care about this fight being a mismatch is the hardcore fans, who are knowledgeable enough about the sport to have an understanding that Mosley is pretty well shot at this late stage in his career. These fans want more for their monies worth for the expensive Pacquiao fights.

The problem is the hardcore fans are greatly outnumbered by casual boxing fans that will gladly purchase this fight on pay-per-view if Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum, with the help of HBO, promotes this fight well enough to get the attention of these fans. Casual fans are always the last to know about who is good and who isn’t. By the time they realize that Mosley is absolutely shot to pieces, it will be too late as they will have already paid their $60 for the bout and won’t be able to turn back. However, since they won’t know that Mosley is fighting like this because of his age, they’ll figure that Pacquiao is just so great and it will be a big plus for Manny.

At the same time, it will be a big plus for boxing because these same casual boxing fans will be paying for the fight in high numbers. Granted, it might be ultimately bad for the sport if this trend continues of matching Pacquiao against guys that aren’t particularly competitive because it’s somewhat dull to see a fighter get totally taken apart without being able to fight back like Mosley will probably be reduced to. A lot of these casual fans are used to the give and take of watching UFC matches, which tend to be brutal, short an exciting fights while they last.

If Mosley runs out of gas after only two rounds and takes punishment for the next 10, the fight could end up turning away the many fans that end up purchasing it. The best thing that could happen is if Pacquiao takes Mosley out as fast as possible before the casual boxing fans realize how shot Mosley is and start to get put off by the mismatch.

This fight is kind of a mixed bag, because it’s probably going to get a lot of casual boxing fans who purchase it because of the marketing of the fight and their slight familiarity with Mosley’s name. But they also could be either tricked into thinking Pacquiao is absolutely great because of how shot Mosley is now or they could also be turned off completely when they see that Mosley can’t fight hard for more than a couple of rounds before going into a permanent fight-long state of exhaustion as he did in the Floyd Mayweather Jr fight.