Smoke billowing from the sidelines, flashing lights, loud music and two pugilists squaring up on a stage, it’s just another day in Floyd Mayweather’s subtle existence. The undefeated welterweight champion began his publicity campaign for the Shane Mosley fight in typical style yesterday with a press conference that saw the rivals stand nose-to-nose and as you would expect handbags were drawn.
You don’t know what is real and what isn’t when the Mayweather circus rolls into town. It looked a lot like a staged publicity stunt, both fighters walked towards each other and immediately squared up then half heartedly began pushing each other. Mayweather is a master of creating publicity; unfortunately his acting skills leave a lot to be desired. Entourages came pouring out and someone looked in danger of breaking a finger nail, before calm was conveniently restored.
That’s not to say there isn’t an intense rivalry between the pair. Many people claim that Mayweather has been ducking Mosley for years and, after the Manny Pacquiao fight fell through, Mayweather was forced to pick a fight that the fans want to see. At 38 years old “Sugar Shane” is past his prime but still showed form by beating Antonio Margarito with a classy display, shocking the experts with a ninth-round TKO.
However, we saw against Miguel Cotto and Winky Wright that Mosley does have chinks in his armour, which will play into Mayweather’s hands. Throughout his career Mayweather has been accused of hand-picking his fights to maintain his unbeaten record - the same was said about Joe Calzaghe.
Is it jealousy or cynicism? I’m not sure, but the modern-day undefeated boxer can’t win. In Mosley’s case he is a big name but he has lost that elite speed he once had and he is also at his best when fighters engage him, which is not what Mayweather will do. Oscar De La Hoya and to an extent Ricky Hatton showed that your only chance of beating Mayweather is to bring the fight to him in the early rounds, but there is no way Mosley is going to do that because he is not that sort of fighter.
An interesting side-note is that both boxers have agreed without fuss to Mayweather’s drug-testing scheme, the scourge of the Pacquiao super-fight. This is interesting because Mosley was embroiled in a drug scandal back in 2003, using performance enhancing drugs before his fight with De La Hoya. Why Mayweather is on a one-man mission to clean up boxing's steroid taking image I don’t know, but it is interesting to see that a former performance enhancing drug user was quick to agree to a thorough drugs test, yet Pacquiao wasn’t.
Anyway, the promotion campaign is going to rage on for months yet and there is no doubt that “Money” has plenty more up his sleeve to sell this fight. I’m also sure he will have one eye on the Pacquiao and Joshua Clottey fight that is coming up this month.
Still, yesterday Mayweather put the skills he learnt from his stint in the WWE to good use, the slagging match and drama he created wouldn’t look out of place in a Hulk Hogan v the Rock championship clash.
Only time will tell if the outcome will be worth all the hype.
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