Mayweather Jr. tells Mosley “You’re going to have to earn my respect”

By Esteban Garduno: Unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. (40-0, 25 KO’s) had some stern words for Shane Mosley (46-5, 39 KO’s) in their sit down interview with HBO analyst Max Kellerman recently, saying “Come May 1st, he’s [Mosley] going to have to make me respect his skills.” Mosley and Mayweather will be fighting on May 1st at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. This is a fight that could break the previous pay-per-view record set by Mayweather and Oscar De La Hoya in 2007 when their fight registered over 2 million PPV buys. Richard Schaefer, the CEO for Golden Boy Promotions, predicts that Mayweather-Mosley will bring in over 3 million PPV buys.

He could be right but even if he’s off by small amount, it won’t matter. This fight is likely to be one of the biggest fights in PPV history because it matches two of the most talented fighters in boxing. Mayweather hasn’t been really tested since his close 12 round split decision win over De La Hoya three years ago. Mosley, 38, could be the one to take Mayweather’s ‘0’ away from him and hand him his first loss.

The one that thing that Mosley has going for him is his age. At 38, he’s getting up there in age, and we could see the effects of his age shown against Mayweather. To add to that, Mosley hasn’t fought in over a year since beating Antonio Margarito by a 9th round stoppage last year. Mosley says that it won’t be an issue for him, but you have to wonder whether the ring rust will be there for him in this fight. Mayweather isn’t the type of fighter you want to fight with any kind of ring rust weighing you down.

As for the rest of the interview with Kellerman, Mayweather repeated all his standard lines that he uses in all of his interviews, saying “40 have tried and 40 have failed…etc.” There really wasn’t any new and interesting things that Mayweather said that was any different than what he’s been saying over and over again without stop for the past month. One thing that Mayweather did say was when he gave Mosley credit for beating Margarito, saying “I’m happy for him. He’s a black American, and I’m a black American.”

The rest of it was the boring stuff like “There’s no blueprint on how to beat me.” Mayweather needs to have someone come up with material for him to say before different interviews, because he repeats himself far too much for a talented fighter like him. Comedian Bob Hope had a joke writer that would write material for him every time he would go out in public for an event. If he knew he had to talk even a little, Hope was ready with new things to say. Mayweather says the same thing in every interview. I’m surprised he can’t come up with new stuff on his own.

If Mayweather wins this fight, he’ll have a chance in theory to fight Manny Pacquiao. I don’t for a second believe that Pacquiao will ever face Mayweather, even if he agrees to drop his request for random blood testing. I think Pacquiao will look in another direction rather than take on Mayweather.