To lure Floyd Mayweather or Manny Pacquiao into the ring, Shane Mosley tried some unorthodox methods. With Mayweather, he grabbed an HBO announcer's microphone during a post-fight interview last autumn and barked his challenge, loud and clear, into living rooms nationwide. With Pacquiao, he would drive to the gym where the Filipino trains and lodge personal requests.
But Mayweather and Pacquiao were more focused on each other.
To be sure, Mosley balked himself. The dynamic of a major prizefight involves more than just gloving up and squeezing between the ropes because fans want to watch.
A decade ago, when Mayweather first openly contemplated the fight, it made no sense for Mosley, who was targeting his two victories over Oscar De La Hoya instead.
By 2007, when Mosley wanted it, it was Mayweather's turn to defeat the cash cow De La Hoya.
But for this moment in history, those dynamics found a common middle ground. So when Mayweather's signed contract arrived Wednesday at Golden Boy Promotions' office in Los Angeles, five days after Mosley's, their long-awaited megafight was finalized for May 1 in Las Vegas.
"I wondered if it would ever happen but I knew it should," Mosley said in an exclusive interview Wednesday. "I knew it was a fight that fight fans needed. You need great fights. You need the top fighters to fight each other."
Mayweather, who turns 33 this month, remains undefeated. Mosley, 38, has five losses and might have benefited from this fight happening a few years ago.
Yet many will regard this as the most formidable challenge of Mayweather's career, a noteworthy tag considering how heated the failed Mayweather-Pacquiao negotiations became.
That was supposed to be the pound-for-pound showdown. When it fell apart, Pacquiao scheduled a bout next month against Joshua Clottey, a competent welterweight but no household name.
Mayweather went directly after the man many consider the third-best fighter in the world, and perhaps the first opponent who can match his vaunted handspeed.
"I've fought a lot of fast people," Mosley said. "I've seen a lot of handspeed in my time. I'm not sure that Mayweather has seen that kind of handspeed in his lifetime of fighting. He's fought a lot of guys who came right at him. I think it will be a different twist for Mayweather to fight somebody just as fast as him, and maybe a little stronger in the ring with him."
Mosley suffers no illusions that he was the backup plan, although he wasn't waiting around to see how it went. He planned to fight Andre Berto last week, until the latter pulled out two weeks ago, citing the Haitian earthquake tragedy. Berto's withdrawal happened to be fortuitously timed after Mayweather-Pacquiao talks collapsed last month.
"The only reason this fight is taking place is because the fight blew up with Pacquiao," Mosley said. "I wanted to fight both guys but they both wanted to avoid me. But, you know, Mayweather will fight. It's just fighting the right guys for the right amount of money, I guess.
"He's never seen anybody as fast as me, or as strong, and I think it'll be a little confusing for him. It's going to be a great fight, though."
Mayweather-Pacquiao fell apart over Mayweather's insistence on Olympic-style, random blood and urine testing. Pacquiao balked.
Mosley, who in a leaked 2003 grand-jury testimony related to the federal BALCO investigation admitted to using steroids purchased from the California laboratory, agreed to random testing.
"Whatever they want to do, that's fine," Mosley said. "I'm tired of hearing people talk about 2003. They can think what they want. I know that I'm clean and I've been clean. So they can test me whenever they want to test me."
For all the failed proposals related to Mosley vs. Mayweather or Pacquiao before, one finally stuck, even if better late than never.
"I'm ready to fight and he's ready to fight," Mosley said. "I'm just happy that it's happening now."
E-mail David Mayo at dmayo@grpress.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/David_Mayo
Source: mlive.com
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