Why Pacquiao-Mosely may be a better fight than you think

As of Tuesday, it's official. Manny Pacquiao's next opponent will be Shane Mosely.

The prospective match-up was being criticized in some quarters before it was ever made. On this year's final episode of Ring Theory, guest Jim Lampley 'unfortunately'(his word for it) predicted a Pacquiao-Mosley match-up before the fact. He presented very solid arguments for on the business side, the precise arguments that surely factored into Arum's decision. This fight makes the most financial sense for Pacquiao, short of a Mayweather fight. It might even make better financial sense than a Mayweather fight. I realize that is counter-intuitive: certainly hard core fans would prefer to see the latter. However, as often as they may keep fighters like Mayweather and Manny working, it isn't the hard core fans who make fights big money fights and the casual fan or the general sports fan may be more aware of Mosley. They also might prefer to watch Mosley, for reasons we can all guess.

Mosley is not widely favored to win. On the episode before the one linked above, Ring Theory stars Bill Dettloff and Eric Raskin both suggested that they did not want to see Mosley take an awful beating from Pacquiao and didn't see another alternative.

I will present another alternative.

Yes, Mosely is on the downturn. I myself said that he got old very fast over the course of his fight with Floyd Mayweather. I also suggested that Mayweather had deliberately picked Mosley because of his own views of the likelihood that such a possibility would happen. With all due respect to the promoters Mayweather has done business with over the course of his career, in the final analysis only Mayweather decides whom he is to fight.

However, Oscar de le Hoya was on the downturn (in the very best analysis, I think I called him completely shot) when he fought Floyd Mayweather. Oscar gave Mayweather a much tougher fight than anyone expected.

I think that this situation is very similar to that of Mayeather-de la Hoya.

NutraSweet Shane is Arum's pick because of a very special combination: he is a recognizable name to casual boxing fans and even the general public knows that he beat Oscar de la Hoya twice. The general sports fan who does not understand that it is much harder to get hit in the face for a living at age 38 than to hit home runs for a living at the same age will probably think Mosley is a very attractive opponent for the Fighting Congressman. So Arum believes he can get a lot of money without risking very much for his meal ticket out of such a fight. Precisely why Mayweather originally picked de la Hoya.

Oscar surprised Floyd by coming into the ring for a prize fight. If Oscar had not been on the way down (or, as I prefer to call it, completely shot)when he fought Floyd, he would have won.

I am going to make two suggestions.

First, Floyd Mayweather Jr. is a better boxer than Manny Pacqiuao. He has practiced certain old school fundamentals from the beginning of his career. Manny has only acquired a certain degree of polish relatively recently. I am not saying that Manny is not a complete fighter. He is. Nor am I saying that his combination of attributes does not make him more dangerous than Floyd or capable of beating Floyd. They might. What I am saying is that Mosley's big defeats against Cotto and Mayweather (and his rematch loss to Vernon Forrest and his draw with Sergio Mora, for that matter)all happened because he wasn't as good a boxer as the guy with whom he stepped into the ring. Manny and Shane may be closer in terms of pure fundamental boxing skill and Shane may be better on the basic fundamentals due to more experience applying them.

Second, more things are equal here than in some of Manny's other match-ups. Shane has to show us how much speed he really has left. However, if he is even at 75% then he is the fastest guy Pacquiao has faced in a long time. Pound-for-pound, if speed is considered relative to weight class and then compared based on this formula, he might be the fastest guy Manny has fought. Both guys have similar styles: they box soundly but look for the punches and like to fight.

I think Manny still wins. I think Shane might get beat up, but I also think he might not get beat up as bad as people think or at least give as well as he gets before finally being stopped. I don't think Shane has enough left in the tank to beat Manny.

I do think, if we have to watch Manny fight guys who can't possibly beat him for a little while longer (and I think we do), better Shane Mosley than Miguel Cotto.


I'm going to add a couple of random comments.

First, this is the next to last posting of the year. There won't be any year-end awards as there were in 2008. I haven't been back up and running at full strength for long enough. The last posting will just be some final thoughts for the year and the my thoughts on the results of the Koki Kameda-Alexander Munoz fight*.

I don't think I've seen anyone else write on this topic, so I'll briefly include it: I think Munoz is a tremendously dangerous choice for Kameda coming off his loss to Pongsaklek Wonjongkam. Munoz is definitely on the downside, but I think he is closer to the top of the slide than the bottom. Nor was Munoz ever quite in the same league as Fernando Montiel. What Munoz is, however, is what he always was. He is a hell of a puncher and an underrated boxer. I think Kameda-Munoz might turn out to be too much like Kameda-Wonjongkam for Koki's comfort. Munoz comes to fight, which Koki doesn't necessarily always do. I think Munoz is in a good position for the upset and that Kameda is in a good position to be seen as 'exposed' by a lot of people in the aftermath of successive big fight defeats. I hope the fight makes its way to YouTube and I am curious to see if my guesses are close to right.


*Kameda and Munoz fight on Boxing Day**. This has to make one smile.

**Boxing Day, traditionally, has nothing to do with actual boxing in most places***. The word 'boxing' refers to the tradition of boxing up the Christmas leftovers and giving them to the poor and the servants to celebrate the feast of St. Stephen on the day after Christmas.

***There are exceptions: Boxing Day is frequently celebrated by literal fights in many African nations (most notably in Sub-Saharan Africa's boxing capitals of Ghana and Nigeria), Guyana, Italy, and bar parking lots across the American South.