LAS VEGAS -- Leonard Ellerbe, Floyd Mayweather’s closest adviser, said the general public probably wasn’t surprised by his man’s victory over Shane Mosley, but by the style of it.
“I thought it was a terrific performance,” Ellerbe said Sunday. “All you’ve got to do is remember our conversation before the fight, when I said beating Shane Mosley, as I just envisioned it in my mind, that people would be surprised -- not that Floyd beat him, but how he beat him.
“Floyd is a complete fighter. He can win any way he has to in the ring. The game plan Roger and Floyd Sr. put together was the keep the fight in the center of the ring, touch, walk, touch, walk. People probably thought this fight was going to be a track meet. But Floyd used very little movement. He stood in the middle of the ring and fought the guy.”Ellerbe, the only original camp member who has remained with the team uninterrupted, openly questioned how anyone could doubt that Mayweather isn’t “the best fighter in the world.”
“He’s arguably the biggest guy out there in all of sports, and he doesn’t get enough credit for how he beats fighters,” Ellerbe said.
Ellerbe said Mayweather would take some time off and “not consider any other opponents” for the next several weeks.
“It was a very, very long promotion, really going back to the Pacquiao talks,” he said, referring to the discussions for a Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight, which were initiated last November, seemed finalized in early December, then lingered for weeks before finally being terminated in early January.
The Mayweather-Pacquiao proposal fell apart over Mayweather’s insistence upon enhanced drug testing, and Pacquiao’s reluctance to agree to same, and any break in that impasse does not seem any more likely now than at the beginning of the year.
Mosley agreed to the same random blood and urine testing that Pacquiao refused.
“I just think that Floyd set the standard,” Ellerbe said. “He set the tone for anybody stepping up to fight him. What he did is great for sports in general, not just boxing.”
E-mail David Mayo: dmayo@grpress.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/David_Mayo
Source: mlive.com
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