Wednesday 17 February 2010

Floyd Mayweather: Shane Mosley's 'desperate ... wants that last big payday'

With training camp two weeks away, Floyd Mayweather gradually has turned his focus from verbally cracking on Manny Pacquiao to physically cracking on Shane Mosley.

The difference between himself and Mosley, he says now, is that he took the fight by choice, while Mosley took it by necessity.

So here, the Grand Rapids native tips off his story line about the May 1 bout, as he views it: Mosley, who initially declined the fight way back in 1999, when both were undefeated, has lost five times and gone through a recent divorce since, and finally agreed for the oldest reason in the sport.

“I just think that Shane Mosley, he’s desperate, so he has no choice but to fight me. His career’s coming to an end and, before he goes, he wants that last big payday,” Mayweather said.

Mosley hasn’t always made the wisest monetary decisions. In 2004, he turned down a $12 million third fight with Oscar De La Hoya, whom he defeated twice, to take $3.5 million against Winky Wright. He lost. Then, he lost a rematch.

It took Mosley more than a year to get back into big-time fights. He defeated Fernando Vargas twice in 2006, after which Mayweather-Mosley made perfect sense. Mosley stood in mid-ring after the fight and said he wanted a vacation instead. Regardless how anyone spins that for the next 2 1/2 months, the interview is its own best evidence.

Now, at age 38, Mosley finally wanted the fight at the same time as Mayweather.

That, the failed Mayweather-Pacquiao talks, and the windfall both figure to make, are why the fight is happening.

“I don’t really like to speak on people’s personal business, because his personal life is his personal life, but he just went through a divorce, and sometimes going through a hard divorce can be very, very excruciating,” Mayweather said. “It can cost a lot of money. And turning down a big-money fight with De La Hoya, then going back to ESPN -- things like that add up.”

Or subtract up, as it were.

Mayweather first called for the fight in 1998, of which he quickly reminds people, and Mosley seems hard-pressed to recall at all.

In December of that year, Mayweather defeated Angel Manfredy and called out two undefeated potential opponents: De La Hoya, in a pie-in-the-sky request, and Mosley.

In February 1999, as Mayweather prepared for his third championship fight, and his first in Grand Rapids, against Carlos Rios of Argentina, he again called out Mosley.

Jack Mosley, who trained his son then, was there. So was Shane Mosley, who did analysis for TNT, in the only Mayweather title fight HBO did not televise.

Jack Mosley said the fight could happen, as long as his son made $10 million.

At the time, Mayweather and Mosley weren’t even making seven figures, much less eight.
It was the classic method of using money to say no.

Today, Mayweather claims that’s the only reason Mosley said yes.

“When I wanted to fight Shane Mosley, he was young and undefeated,” Mayweather said. “But there’s always going to be an excuse. When I beat Shane, of course, it’s going to be that he was an old man. I’m too big for (Juan Manuel) Marquez but I’m not too big for Pacquiao, even though Pacquiao and Marquez had life-or-death fights, and they’re both the same size. As far as that goes, I’m always in a no-win situation.”

When Mayweather first called out Mosley, he weighed 130 pounds, to Mosley’s 135. Mosley immediately moved up two divisions, to welterweight, the 147-pound class, where he remains.

It took six years before Mayweather reached that weight, and another two beyond that -- after his 2007 win over De La Hoya -- before Mosley started to answer his call.

“I told Shane Mosley that all roads lead through Floyd Mayweather and that everybody makes their biggest payday with me,” Mayweather said. “I think it just took him 12 years to see that this is true.”

In 73 days, we’ll find out whose mouth wrote the check his fists couldn’t cash.

By David Mayo | The Grand Rapids Press

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