It’s the usual fight before the fight.
Sugar Shane Mosley and Floyd Mayweather representatives are squabbling over how to split all the revenue for the All American matchup of two top tier welterweights. Both sides are still working towards a May 1 or May 8 Las Vegas date.
“Talks are ongoing and the talks are completely cordial,” a source in the Mosley camp reported to me Monday. “There are no huge issues.”
That’s a mirror quote of what Mayweather adviser Laughing Lenny Ellerbe told the Los Angeles Times a few days back. In fact, Ellerbe also used the adjective “cordial.”
While a source inside Money May’s camp informed over the weekend that L’il Floyd has questioned whether it’s smart business for him to take a much smaller yet still rich purse for a dangerous bout against the still formidable at age 39 Mosley, I now don’t place too much emphasis on any lingering doubts Mayweather may harbor.
At some point, it behooves Mosley, Mayweather and promoter Golden Boy, which still has the golden “output contract” with HBO, to dance to the music requested by the prime cable network’s boxing bossman, Ross Greenburg.
When the Manny Pacquiao-Mayweather talks crashed over random blood testing, there was little Greenburg could do. He still salvaged a hot property for his employer by getting all over the Pacman-Joshua Clottey “Event” set for March 13 at the sparkling, new Dallas Cowboys stadium Jerry Jones had built in Arlington.
Greenburg has to be pleased seeing that, on the first full business day (Saturday) at the Cowboys box office, 20,000 tickets went out the window. And the Top Rank promotion has yet to officially announce the return on the show of Mexican star Antonio Margarito and to begin implementing a sales drive in northern Mexico, centered about Monterey, which is a Cowboys football hotbed.
If the promotion continues en fuego, who is to say there might not be 50,000 rear ends parked in the mammoth stadium’s seats, providing a dramatic backdrop for the PPV telecast.
Now if HBO gets to dress up Mosley-Mayweather, the prime cable network has gained two huge attractions and lost only the mildly interesting Mosley-Andre Berto bout.
Obviously the unbeaten Berto, who withdraw from the Jan. 30 Mosley date due to turmoil in his family’s homeland of Haiti, is not the ratings magent that bigger, longer established stars like Shane and Floyd are.
That’s why Mosley-Berto was scheduled for regular HBO and not PPV TV.
(mlcmarley@aol.com)
Source: examiner.com
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