By Manuel Perez: It seems like Shane Mosley is going about trying to get a fight with Manny Pacquiao in the wrong way. First of all, it doesn’t matter how interested Mosley is in fighting Pacquiao or how willing Shane is to come down to whatever handicapping catch weight that Freddie Roach and Pacquiao dream up. The fight won’t be made unless Pacquiao, his trainer Roach and perhaps most of all Manny’s promoter Bob Arum want it to be made.
And by the way things are looking, I don’t see Mosley having a chance in hell of getting a fight with Pacquiao, even if Mosley were to agree to come down to an energy draining 130 to fight Manny. Why is that? Well, probably cause Mosley is way too dangerous for Pacquiao at any weight because of Mosley’s combination of speed, power and excellent chin. This wouldn’t the case of Pacquiao beating up on a shot and weight-drained Oscar De La Hoya or a fragile-chinned Ricky Hatton. Mosley wouldn’t fold easily like those two and Pacquiao would find himself in for the fight of his life.
Since Pacquiao couldn’t really beat Juan Manuel Marquez without a controversial 12 round decision last time out, the chances of Pacquiao beating Mosley would seem about impossible. Pacquiao for obvious reasons hasn’t been eager to get back in the ring with Marquez for a rematch, and has gone after easier pickings with De La Hoya and Hatton. The same holds true now. Miguel Cotto looks to be the man of the hour for Pacquiao and his team.
Why that be? It doesn’t take a genius to see that Cotto looked perfectly awful in his fight with Joshua Clottey, getting beaten up, running a lot of the time and appearing to lose the fight by a close margin. Before the fight with Clottey, Pacquiao and his team were reluctant to fight Cotto, but afterwards their attitude seemed to change overnight.
Cotto is vulnerable, hence the perfect opponent for Pacquiao. Now, it really is sad that Pacquiao would rather go after a fighter like Cotto who is only two fights away from being beaten almost senseless by Antonio Margarito rather than Mosley. But that’s the way things go. It looks like Pacquiao and his team are going after the easy money rather than choosing a much more dangerous opponent like Mosley, who would in all likelihood beat Pacquiao and thus remove any chance of Pacquiao fighting Floyd Mayweather Jr. in the future.
Mosley needs to forget about the Pacquiao bout and quit with his talking about the fight and saying he’d be willing to do this or that to get the bout. It’s beneath him and only degrading Mosley in my view. He needs to have pride and forget about this fight. Like I said, it probably doesn’t matter what Mosley does, Pacquiao won’t be fighting him.
If Mosley said he’d be willing to tie one of his arms behind his back, I’d be willing to guess that he’s still be forced to come in at some silly catch weight draining catch weight of 140 to get a fight with Pacquiao. In all seriousness, this isn’t sport when a fighter needs his opponents to come in at a catch weight.
This is some kind of farce if you ask me. Of course, I think Pacquiao shouldn’t be considered the number #1 pound for pound boxer of anything, because a fighter that needs his opponents to come in at catch weights in order to fight them isn’t what I consider to be a top fighter of anything.
In the end, Pacquiao will go ahead and fight Cotto and probably beat the trunks off of him and prove nothing other than he can beat a fighter that is still shaky after his beating by the Mexican Margarito and who was forced to come in at a catch weight.