By Chris Williams: If Top Rank promoter Bob Arum and trainer Freddie Roach had their ways, World Boxing Organization welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao would be facing WBA welterweight champion Shane Mosley next and not unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. Both Roach and Arum see it easier to deal with Mosley and set up a fight compared to Mayweather, who will likely ask for Olympic style random blood testing to be done before he’ll step in the ring with Pacquiao.
Roach also believes that a fight between Mosley and Pacquiao would be much more of a boxing fan friendly fight, because of Mosley’s tendency to go toe to toe with his opponents. There’s no question that Mosley would be trying to slug it out with Pacquiao all night long rather than boxing from the outside like Mayweather will probably do. Despite his wanting Pacquiao to fight Mosley, Roach is realistic about what the fans want to see. He acknowledges that most fans care more to see Mayweather vs. Pacquiao rather than Mosley vs. Pacquiao. Roach says that he thinks that Mayweather will beat Mosley when they meet on May 1st at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Roach believes that Mayweather’s movement will cause problems for Mosley, who doesn’t do well against fighters that move a lot.
The problem with Arum and Roach’s wanting Mosley to fight Pacquiao is that it’s not likely to happen. Mosley is 38-years-old and probably not going to do well enough to beat Mayweather. Arum and Roach are going to have to deal with that, accept it and try to get their fighter Pacquiao to agree to the random blood testing that Mayweather wants. This is the fight that fans really care about.
If Arum and Roach become stubborn and unyielding about that issue and leave it up to the Athletic Commission to decide, then they might as say they don’t want Pacquiao to fight Mayweather, because the blood testing is part of the deal with setting up a fight with Mayweather. If Arum, Roach and Pacquiao want the truly huge money that comes with a fight against Mayweather, then they have to be willing to make some minor sacrifices about random blood testing.
They can wish all they want that Mosley comes out on top, but it’s probably going to leave them feeling frustrated in the end when Mayweather comes out on top. It would be better for Arum and Roach to accept that Mayweather will probably win, and start early trying to make Pacquiao understand the importance of him taking the random blood tests that Mayweather is asking for.
Pacquiao will have to face the fear of having blood taken from him, but once he realizes that it’s not logical for a fighter to be weak from having small amounts of blood taken from him, he should be okay with taking the fight. Arum and Roach should put Mosley completely out of their mind and focus entirely on Mayweather. He’s the one that will likely win, and besides that, he’s the one that boxing fans want to see.
Mosley is a nice guy, but if boxing fans don’t care to see him, then why waste time wanting Pacquiao to fight him? They already have Pacquiao fighting Joshua Clottey this Saturday night. Although there are a lot of people coming to see the Pacquiao-Clottey fight, this fight hasn’t generated a lot of interest mainly because Clottey is an unknown fighter, and is coming off a loss in his last fight to Miguel Cotto.
It’s a credit to Pacquiao that he’ll probably bring in good pay per view numbers, but those numbers for the Clottey fight are nothing compared to what they would have been had Pacquiao fought Mayweather. That’s the fight that boxing fans care about.
Source: boxingnews24.com
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment