Was anyone surprised at how bad Mosley looked against Pacquiao?

By Boxing News - 05/08/2011 - Comments

Image: Was anyone surprised at how bad Mosley looked against Pacquiao?By Chris Williams: For the hardcore boxing fans, they pretty much knew last night’s mega fight between WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao and Shane Mosley was going to be a terrible mismatch with Pacquiao easily winning the fight. I knew it, and thought it was a bad idea because it was giving a bad product to fans and asking them to pay $55 to see it. I spent my teenage years working as a waiter, and one of things I learned was to give good service if I wanted the customers to come back.

In the case of the Pacquiao-Mosley fight, I saw that as a fight that would burn a lot of customers, and some of them might not be happy at having paid their hard-earned money to watch a mismatch. In turn, we may have lost a lot of would be new fans of the sport with a fight like this. The bout was advertised on CBS, a non-pay per view channel and we likely got a lot of casual fans paying to see the fight hoping to see a good fight. It’s likely many of these casual fans were on the fence about the sport, unsure whether they liked the sport or not.

Some may have been fans of MMA and saw the big boxing event as something they might watch and then compare to MMA. Well, I think the Mosley-Pacquiao fight may have turned off many fans. And the thing is, it isn’t like this was unexpected. We saw what Mosley had left in his last two fights against Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Sergio Mora. Those were two fights where Mosley showed pretty clearly that he was showing the signs of being shot and unable to pull the trigger. Why then was Mosley chosen as Pacquiao’s opponent for a big fight that was advertised on CBS? I think with the help of the Fight Camp 360 episodes shown by CBS the Mosley vs. Pacquiao fight will do well in terms of PPV numbers.

However, I also think a lot of the fans that bought the fight will feel burned for having purchased it because it wasn’t a good product. As a former waiter, I would never have put together a fight like this – no way. To me, it’s the equivalent of serving my customers week old meatloaf when they ordered veal cordon bleu. I may be able to stick the customers with the meatloaf but I wouldn’t be expecting them to ever come back for more. This is how I feel about the Pacquiao-Mosley fight. I think it was a bad idea that Pacquiao’s management should have seen coming. It’s not good for the sport to set up mismatches, especially ones involving fighters that can no longer pull the trigger.

Pacquiao is now likely going to be fighting soon to be 38-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez at welterweight. I hate this fight unless it’s fought at lightweight. We already saw that Marquez can’t fight at welterweight when he was easily beaten by Mayweather Jr. in 2009. What’s the point in signing to fight Marquez and having him fight Pacquiao at 147? It will be another mismatch.



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