By Kevin Baxter, Los Angeles Times
LAS VEGAS -- Floyd Mayweather Jr. overcame a slow start to wear down a game but overmatched Shane Mosley on Saturday, scoring a unanimous-decision victory in a 12-round welterweight bout at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.
The 38-year-old Mosley, fighting for the first time since January 2009, set a furious pace from the start but it caught up with him as early as the third round. By the finish both of his eyes were swollen.
Two judges scored the fight 119-109 for Mayweather while another judge had it 118-110 for the winner.
But while Saturday's dominating victory would seem to leave the unbeaten Mayweather with only one worthy opponent, he wasn't promising anything regarding Manny Pacquiao.
"If he wants to fight it's not that hard to find me," Mayweather said.
The boxers appeared to have an agreement several months ago but it fell apart because of Mayweather's insistance that Pacquiao agree to a blooding-testing regime the Filipino opposed. That obstacle appears to remain.
"It will take a test to make a fight happen," Mayweather said. "If he doesn't want to test, we don't have a fight."
The 33-year-old Mayweather (41-0, 25 knockouts), was fighting for just the second time since ending his two-year retirement last September and he initially seemed surprised by the quick hands of his opponent from Pomona. But once he settled down, he was able to land hard right hand after hard right hand that both slowed and hurt Mosley (46-6, 39 KOs).
"I did what the fans came here to see, A toe-to-toe battle," Mayweather said. "That's not my style but I wanted to give them that kind of fight. I knew I could do it."
He said the gameplan unfolded just as his corner predicted it would.
"They told me to box and then wait on the attack," he said. "I think we could have pressed the attack a lot earlier and got the knockout."
Of the big right hand that caught him early, Mayweather said: "In a contact sport you get hit. But when you get hit you suck it up and keep on going. That's what I did."
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times
Source: latimes.com
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