Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Mayweather-Mosley steals the thunder away from Pacquiao-Clottey bout

By Chris Williams: The recent news about a possible mega fight between unbeaten welterweight star Floyd Mayweather Jr. (40-0, 25 KO’s) and World Boxing Association welterweight champion Shane Mosley (46-5, 39 KO’s) has drained away a lot of the interest in the March 13th fight between WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao and Joshua Clottey given the huge positive reaction by boxing fans on the net.

It might not have taken a fight against a talented fighter like Mosley for this to happen, because the Pacquiao-Clottey fight doesn’t appear all that interesting due to Clottey’s recent defeats, his low work rate and his tendency to fade by the 9th round of his fights. It’s pretty obvious that Pacquiao is going to end up outworking Clottey in the fight and win by a lopsided 12 round decision, even if Pacquiao takes some punishment along the way.

However, the Mayweather-Mosley fight appears to be an even match between two of the best fighters in the welterweight division. It’s difficult to pick a winner in this fight because both of them are so evenly match with their boxing ability and physical skills.

Although the fight hasn’t been signed, it looks as if it’s going to happen. Mosley, 38, was slated to fight WBC welterweight champion Andre Berto later this month on January 30th in a unification bout. However, Berto lost family members in the tragic earthquake in Haiti recently and is can’t fully concentrate because of this.

This leaves Mosley looking for an opponent to fight next. It worked perfectly for him and Mayweather, as Floyd was badly in need of someone to fight after his talks with Pacquiao fell apart recently over the random drug testing methods for the fight. Now, it’s looking like Mayweather are set to take part in one of the more evenly matched mega fights that we’ve seen in some time.

In recent years, there’s been a number of mega fights involving Oscar De La Hoya being pitted against Mayweather and Pacquiao. We’ve also seen Pacquiao facing Ricky Hatton and Miguel Cotto. None of those fighters appeared to be even remotely as competitive as the Mayweather-Mosley bout in my view. This is a truly a fight where you don’t know who will win and it makes it really appealing for the boxing fans.

Mosley is considered to be the top fighter in the welterweight division right now because of his win over Antonio Margarito last year. Mosley may have lost a controversial 12 round decision to Cotto in November 2007, but Shane still appears to be the top guy in the division right now based on how he looked against Margarito. He had been trying to get a fight with Pacquiao last year, and even was willing to meet him at a 143 catch weight.

Instead, Pacquiao chose to fight Cotto, who had been recently destroyed by Margarito only a year earlier.

Mayweather has fought only once in the past two years, beating an undersized bloated Juan Manuel Marquez by a 12 round decision in September. Mayweather looked great, albeit against a smaller fighter than him. He won’t have that advantage against Mosley, who is an inch taller than Mayweather and is a legitimate welterweight as opposed to Marquez, who had moved up only recently from the super featherweight division to the lightweight class.

The Pacquiao-Clottey fight appears, at least to me, to have the makings of a mismatch. I liked Clottey as a fighter until seeing him get dominated by Margarito in December 2006. Like a lot of his fights, Clottey looked good for about four or five rounds and then seemed to run out of gas entirely letting Margarito dominate the rest of the fight and easily win.

This is kind of how I see the Pacquiao-Clottey fight going and I can’t get excited about it. And it looks like boxing fans aren’t quite as exciting judging by the way that few of them are giving Clottey any real chance to win the fight. It’s too bad that Pacquiao didn’t opt to fight someone like Paul Williams instead. That would have been a great fight.

Source: boxingnews24.com

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