Shane Mosley fights for a shot at Manny Pacquiao
Shane Mosley wants to be the solution to boxing’s most troublesome possibility — if Floyd Mayweather Jr. won’t fight Manny Pacquiao, who will?
To get there required a bold act of independence, something the world welterweight champion from Pomona is not used to doing, having struggled through bad promotional alliances, a strife-filled marriage and dealings with BALCO founder Victor Conte.
But Mosley, 39, reached out to Top Rank’s Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s promoter, rather than wait for his Golden Boy Promotions team to end a stalemate with Top Rank, and rather than lean on his New York attorney, who is representing Golden Boy in a lawsuit over Pacquiao profits.
“I’m conducting business myself,” Mosley said Wednesday after visiting Arum last week outside Dallas and attending Pacquiao’s unanimous-decision victory over Antonio Margarito. “If I have to wait for these others, I’m not going to get the fight I want.”
Mosley (46-6-1, 39 knockouts) said he has received assurances from Arum that he’ll be strongly considered for either a Pacquiao fight or a rematch against Miguel Cotto, Top Rank’s world junior-middleweight champion who edged Mosley by decision in 2007.
“There’s no one in first place right now after Floyd,” Arum said. “We have a birthday party Dec. 17 in the Philippines for Manny. If Mayweather hasn’t indicated his availability by then, Shane Mosley is a real possibility.”
Mosley, who lost to Mayweather in May, is coming off a lackluster September draw over Sergio Mora and Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach has said Mosley “needs to retire.” But Mosley counters, “I punch harder and faster than Margarito, I’d land more body shots. … It’d be a good, explosive matchup.”
Arum praised Mosley’s persistence: “He’s being a real man. It’s his life, his career.”
Mosley also talked about his decision to drop a $12-million defamation lawsuit against Conte for alleging the boxer knowingly took performance-enhancing drugs to help win a 2003 decision over Oscar De La Hoya.
“It’s over, and I’m going to leave it at that,” Mosley said of Conte. “I decided, ‘Let’s shut this thing down.’ He has no money. There was no win in this.”
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