If Sugar Shane Mosley
has his way, the former four-time world champion will beat Sergio Mora in their non-title, junior middleweight (154 pounds) bout on Sept. 18 and then rise to a career-high 160 pounds to dethrone WBC middleweight king Sergio Martinez, Mosley told FaHouse on Wednesday.Of course, the 38-year-old Mosley (46-6, 39 knockouts) said that he would also like a shot at seven-division king Manny Pacquiao (51-3-2, 38 knockouts), holder of the WBO welterweight (147 pounds) belt.
"If I could map out my career from now on out, I'm just ready to make some more money. I've gone through some personal stuff, so I've got to recoup everything that I've lost and go from there. But in order to do that, I just need to go out and do what I know how to do in the ring," said Mosley, in his first public comments since losing by unanimous decision to Floyd Mayweather (41-0, 25 KOs) on May 1. Although he has spent much of his time away from the ring traveling and vacationing with his children, Mosley said that it has been difficult to forget how close he was to stopping Mayweather with that powerful right hand in the second round.
"When I hurt him in the second round, [my fans have] said that they were pulling for me and that they thought that I was going to knock him out. But Floyd did a good job, and he recovered. He hung on and he did what he had to do to win," said Mosley. "I just want to get back into the ring and to get that feeling again. I just want to get into the ring and get back to fighting and to being myself. That's going to be a great feeling."
When Mosley takes on Mora at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, it will be at the site of his two most celebrated victories.
On June 17, 2000, Mosley dethroned then-WBC welterweight champion Oscar De La Hoya with a 12-round split-decision. In January of 2009, Mosley scored a ninth-round stoppage that dethroned WBA welterweight super champion Antonio Margarito, who was knocked out for the first time in his career.
Mora (22-1-1, six KOs) also has a history at the Staples Center.
In October of 2005, the Staples Center played host to Mora's split-decision victory over Peter Manfredo Jr. for the crown and a $1 million purse in the widely popular "Contender" television series. Mora dropped a scheduled July 23 bout against Colombian-born Juan Carlos Candelo (30-10-4, 20 KOs) to make the deal to face Mosley.
Mosley will be facing Mora on a pay-per-view card that will feature Saul Alvarez, a 19-year-old Mexican welterweight sensation with a record of 32-0-1 with 24 KOs, who will no doubt thrill the Hispanic fans expected to take part in the festivities surrounding Mexican Independence Day.
"You know, I think that it will be like a homecoming for me. There have been a lot of great things that have happened for me there at the Staples Center. I've had two of my best wins there," said Mosley, who is from nearby Pamona, Calif., while the 29-year-old Mora is from East Los Angeles.
"It's going to be part of the Mexican Independence Day celebration, and I have a lot of Mexican fans," said Mosley. "That's going to be great. There is a great undercard underneath that's going to be fighting. I'm pretty sure that the Staples Center is going to be packed."
Prior to choosing to face Mora, Mosley had also been considering matchups against Martinez (45-2-2, 24 KOs) and WBC welterweight (147) belt holder Andre Berto (26-0, 20 KOs), both of whom are promoted by Lou DiBella.
DiBella had proposed that a Martinez bout be contested at a catch weight of 155 pounds for Martinez's title, and that Mosley would get a 60-40 split of the purse. Berto was asking for a 50-50 split of the purse with Mosley.
Prior to facing Mayweather, Mosley and Berto had worked out a deal to fight on Jan. 30 -- before a distraught Berto pulled out to devote time assisting with Hatian disaster relief as a result of the January earthquake that killed several of his relatives.
Mosley said that a bout with Berto is something that he would still consider.
"I mean, Berto is another option at 147. I could make the 147 pound weight class again. I can make 154. I can kind of go into different weight classes and still get away with it," said Mosley. "With Berto, I mean, we had agreed upon a fight with Berto before the Floyd Mayweather fight already. So if they want to go back to that, then, yeah, maybe we could do that fight because we had already had a deal."
Before losing to Mayweather, Mosley, recently stripped of his WBA title, had twice beaten De La Hoya and scored consecutive knockouts over former world champion Fernando Vargas. Mosley has, among his six defeats, two unanimous decision losses to the late Vernon Forrest, in January and July of 2002.
Mora split his pair of matchups with Forrest, dethroning him for the WBC 154-pound championship to improve to 21-0-1 with a majority decision in June of 2008, then losing that crown in their return bout three months later by a one-sided, unanimous decision.
Mora ended a 19-month layoff with his last fight, April's seventh-round knockout of Calvin Green (21-5-1, 13 KOs).
Although he will turn 39 on Sept. 7 -- 11 days before facing Mora -- Mosley said that he is not worried about growing old in the ring.
"I'm not going to start worrying about the age factor until I'm 44 or 45 years old like Bernard Hopkins," said Mosley. "I'm actually used to it, I guess, because I didn't really think about it until you mentioned it. I'm going to be 39? You know, until you said that, I really didn't think about that or realize that."
Source: boxing.fanhouse.com
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