By Chris Williams: Television analyst/trainer Teddy Atlas chimed in on ESPN’s Friday Night Fights with why he felt Top Rank promoter Bob Arum hand picked the shot looking 39-year-old Shane Mosley as Manny Pacquiao’s next fight on May 7th.

Atlas pretty much said what many people already think about why Arum selected Mosley rather than someone that actually has an excellent chance of beating Pacquiao like Juan Manuel Marquez and WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez, saying “Look, it’s not personal, Bryan [Kenny], it;s business. Bob Arum is not going to fight anybody he doesn’t control both sides or where he can’t get options on. So, he’s gonna make sure that it;s always business in this case. And he’s gonna make sure that it’s a fighter that has name recognition. Yeah, I would rather see Juan Manuel Marquez, no doubts about it. he’s fought him two times. Both fights could be disputed where maybe Marquez could have won the fight, but it’s not gonna be. It’s gonna be a fight that Arum can control it. Where he can make sure that he is gonna be in control of all parts of it, all dimensions of it and where there’s name recognition. You walk into a store, you gonna buy Hershey;s chocolate or are you gonna buy Joe’s chocolate. Well you’re gonna buy Hershey’s. Joe’s might be great, but Hershey’s is recognizable.”

So by follwing Atlas’s thinking, in the case of Arum matching Pacquiao against his non-popular Top Rank stable fighters Antonio Margarito and Joshua Clottey in the past, this would mean that those fights happened because Arum controlled them because they were part of his stable. In other words, they didn’t need to be popular like Mosley in order to get a fight with Pacquiao, they got the fight because they were part of Arum’s stable. It’s too bad that Pacquiao isn’t put in with fighters that actually have a chance to beat him instead of being matched just by the basis of either name value or being controlled by Arum. It’s disappointing not to see Pacquiao in with Marquez and Martinez, two fighters that I feel would beat him but can’t get a fight with him.