By Chris Williams: The May 7th Manny Pacquiao (52-3-2, 38 KO’s) vs. Shane Mosley (46-6-1, 39 KO’s) fight is going to be marketed like mad on CBS/Showtime and sold for $54 on pay-per-view to boxing fans who are expecting to see a competitive fight. The thing of it is the 40ish Mosley doesn’t appear capable of fighting a competitive fight with lesser fighters than Pacquiao at this point in his career.
Mosley is going life and death with non-champions like Sergio Mora. How do you expect that Mosley is going to be competitive with a much better fighter like Pacquiao can’t even beat Mora? Well I’m sure Pacquiao’s fans probably don’t care who Pacquiao faces. Many of them would be happy just to see Pacquiao sparring and would gladly pay for this privilege. However, boxing fans that are seeing Pacquiao for the first time, and believe me there will be many of those due to the marketing of the fight on the non-premium CBS, will likely be angry and heck at paying big money to see a hopeless mismatch.
Many of these fans are used to watching exciting MMA fights where there’s a lot of give and take between younger fighters that are in their prime. What we have here is one guy that’s in his prime, Pacquiao, facing another fighter, Mosley, who left his prime years behind him in the rearview mirror long ago. This is a recipe for a disaster, with a lot of boxing fans potentially feeling angry and ripped off. They’re not astute enough to research Mosley and see how shot he is.
They’re going to find out the hard way by paying first and finding out later that Mosley is as shot as they come. I just hope there’s not a backlash against boxing because of his experiment. I don’t mind the fight being advertised on CBS, but you got to at least match Pacquiao up with a guy with a pulse instead of a guy dead on his feet heading for his gold watch and retirement.
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