By Chris Robinson
The boxing world is completely consumed with this Saturday night's showdown between Manny Pacquiao and Shane Mosley. Set to take place inside of the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, the fight may not quite be as 'super' as some recent blockbusters but you can't name a bigger event thus far in 2011.
I've been getting predictions on the big fight from a wide array of characters in the sport and before dozing off I decided to hit up trainer Jeff Mayweather to get his take. Mayweather sees Mosley as far from finished and seems to be intrigued by the possibility of Shane landing a bomb on Pacquiao, who has never shown defense to be his trademark.
"It's an interesting fight," said Jeff. "I'm like everyone else, I lean towards Pacquiao, but I feel that Mosley is a very live underdog and I feel that if Mosley can catch my nephew, probably the best defense fighter on the planet right now, he should be able to catch Manny Pacquiao, who has no defense. If he catches Manny like he did Floyd, he has a great chance of pulling off the upset, and there have been a lot of upsets lately."
When it comes the Pacquiao, the Mayweather family, including Jeff's brothers Roger and Floyd Sr. as well as his nephew Floyd, have all been critical in the past and shown their curiosity towards the eight-division champion possibly using performance enhancing drugs to boost his accomplishments. The backlash to the Mayweather's words has been notable and I tried to change things up by asking Jeff what positives he saw in Pacquiao.
"Don't get me wrong, I don't have on Manny," Jeff insisted. "It's just that most of the time I am just having to defend my nephew against Manny because people act like Manny is God. But Manny's a good fighter. He has good speed and he has good power. The only real Achilles heel I see in him is that he does get hit and hit a lot. But offensively he's a beast, he's a monster for anybody."
People would love to see Floyd Jr. back inside of the ring and sure enough, some rumors have been running rampant about him possibly returning to fight in August at Cowboys Stadium. But just as a recent FightHype.com interview with Ben Thompson shows, boxing is not on Floyd's agenda for the moment.
"To be honest I don't even know if that's true because I talked to Floyd and basically it's like boxing is the furthest thing from his mind. We talked about everything else except boxing. I'm not sure what is going on. I'm just like everyone else, I'm sitting on the edge of the seat waiting to see what's going to happen."