Mosley, Mayweather bring out fans in force

WASHINGTON -- Your weekly random thoughts …
• Wednesday in the nation's capital was a nasty, rainy, cold day, so I wasn't sure what to expect in terms of turnout when I made the half-hour drive from my house in Northern Virginia into the District (that's what we locals call it) to attend the second of three Shane Mosley-Floyd Mayweather promotional tour stops ahead of their much-anticipated welterweight title showdown May 1 at the MGM in Las Vegas.

It was a nice surprise to see the weather sure didn't keep any of the fans away. The Lincoln Theatre was packed to capacity (about 1,000 people) with fans and media for what I'll refer to as more of a pep rally than a news conference. Even after the doors were closed, there must have been at least another 500-plus people standing around outside wanting to get inside. Washington is definitely a good fight town.

The folks who did make it inside were treated to video presentations about both fighters, music, and an endless loop of audio and video hyping the fight's promotional theme, "Who R U Picking?" (I'll disclose my pick the week of the fight.) Then the fighters were introduced, which included Mosley and Mayweather standing nose to nose and jawing at each other for the second consecutive day before they had to be separated.

Unlike the previous day in New York, however, they didn't put their hands on each other. You have buy the pay-per-view to see that. I just hope Mayweather is as aggressive during the fight as he was when he went right to Mosley's chest after his introduction.

The "news conference" was standard fare but I am sure quite exciting for fans who have never attended such an event.

Golden Boy's Richard Schaefer and Oscar De La Hoya and Mayweather adviser Leonard Ellerbe hyped the pay-per-view and their impressive array of sponsors. HBO's Mark Taffet said his piece. So did the MGM's Bob Halloran (including an unexpected but very kind shout-out to yours truly). Naazim Richardson, Mosley's trainer, spoke eloquently. And the fighters spoke amid cheering (and some booing) from the crowd. Everyone spoke about what a great match it was and what a great fight it will be.

What I thought was great was that both Mayweather and Mosley did their best to sign every autograph, pose for every photo and chat with the fans after the formal program. In what other sport can a regular Joe get so close to the stars?

This fight is going to be huge. Maybe not Manny Pacquiao-Mayweather huge, but huge. Like all promoters, Schaefer loves to predict big numbers for his PPV fights. He should. He's trying to sell as many units as he can. He predicted that Mayweather-De La Hoya would break the all-time PPV record in 2007, and it did. Last year, he predicted that Mayweather-Juan Manuel Marquez would crack a million buys, which few believed. It did. So when Schaefer predicted Wednesday that Mosley-Mayweather would break the Mayweather-De La Hoya record, I didn't laugh this time. It could.

Source: espn.go.com