Wednesday, April 28, 2010

FLOYD "MONEY" MAYWEATHER AND SUGAR SHANE MOSLEY GRAND ARRIVALS QUOTES

Fighters Kick-Off Fight Week Activities with Fighting Words


FLOYD "MONEY" MAYWEATHER

On Sugar Shane Mosley:

"When I beat him, they are going to say he is old.

"All these fighters get the belts that I gave up. When you are bigger than the sport, belts don't mean anything. He needs a belt...A belt means something to him."

On breaking records:

"All I can do is hope for the best. There is no limit to what we can do. The sky is not even the limit. If they did say a fight is going to do 700,000 homes, it will do something like 1.4 million. We can never predict a certain number.

"The ultimate goal is to always break records."

On USADA Drug Testing:

"There are all these athletes out there cheating. I am clean and pure.

"I know I am a clean athlete. I didn't start taking vitamins until I was 30, so I know I am a clean athlete.

"You see so many different fighters going into comas and dying. All fighters are taking is a urine test. From what I hear, enhancement drugs are making these fighters punch harder and all it is doing is hurting the sport.

"I want to be able to separate the average from the good and from the great. I want to separate the ordinary from the extraordinary."

On the success of 24/7:

"I truly believe that we have so many different characters. My father, when he is in the boxing gym, is 'Floyd Joy.' My uncle is 'The Black Mamba.' We have children that are characters. And of course, myself, I am leading the pack. So many different personalities and so many people inside the gym and outside the gym. We have fun, but we know when to turn it on and when to turn it off.

"This is something that we talked about for a long time. Going in depth and behind the scenes, and showing things that no one had ever shown about a fighter. We talked about this back in the 90s.

"I think that in my household, when I am with my family, we are always positive and thankful for what we have. As far as the world right now, people love to watch controversy. Any show that is really controversial. I think I am versatile. I am very controversial, but when I get home, I am Floyd Mayweather and to my children, I am just dad."

On his team:

"Our whole circle has changed totally. The only two people that are still here are me and you (to Leonard Ellerbe). Mainly the guys that are with me now are the guys I grew up with (in Grand Rapids, MI).

"I have Rafael Garcia. He does a tremendous job. You get what you pay for in life. You want your hands to be wrapped by the best so you have no hand problems, you get Rafael Garcia. If you want to make tremendous money, you hire the best to make you the best deals. Simple as that."

SUGAR SHANE MOSLEY

On the fight:

"This is what makes Sugar Shane Mosley; being able to fight, being able to box, and being ready mentally.

"I can box too. I have boxed guys I was supposed to punch out. This is what makes me Sugar Shane. Being able to box, being able to slip and slide, being able to do everything.

"Every time I fight, I'm looking to knock the guy out.

"I don't think I am going to spend the whole fight trying to outbox him. I am going to do everything Sugar Shane is supposed to do.

"Every fight has its own significance. This fight would be a great win. Beating Floyd would be a big feather in my cap."

On Floyd Mayweather:

"He brings a lot of mouth and we'll see what this mouth is about.

"He had to fight somebody if he wanted to be considered the best.

"It's not really what Floyd says or believes; it's about what I believe.

"I see where he has slipped and I see some things where his body is beginning to go. But he doesn't see that.

"He has great defense. He's a great fighter. That's why we are looking at each other May 1. I am happy he accepted this challenge."

On his love of boxing:

"I'm always doing something. I'm never really that far away from the gym.

"Even when I retire, I'll probably never be far from the gym. I will be sparring. I can't get away from the gym.

"It depends on how you train. That's the most important part of the picture.

On the scuffle in the ring following Mayweather vs. Marquez:

"You guys seem to forget, I am part of Golden Boy Promotions. That's why I was in the ring.

"The reason why I said something was because I was called over and I was welcomed into the conversation."

On trash-talking:

"Floyd says a lot of things that are sometimes out of line. I guess right now we are enemies.

"A lot of times when people say something that's true it hurts. But then when they say something that isn't true, it just rolls off your shoulder.

"When they say those different things and I know they're not the truth, I can't change their mind. I know the truth."

On past losses:

"The fight game is really a mental game. People don't realize that. It's not really that physical. I think mentally, at that point in my career I wasn't on top of my game mentally."

# # #

Mayweather vs. Mosley: Who R U Picking? is promoted by Mayweather Promotions and Golden Boy Promotions, and sponsored by Cerveza Tecate, AT&T, DeWALT Tools and StubHub. The 12-round welterweight battle is set for Saturday, May 1 at MGM Grand in Las Vegas and will be produced and distributed live on HBO Pay-Per-View® beginning at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT.

Tickets, priced at $1,250, $1,000, $600, $300 and $150 not including applicable service charges, are on sale now and limited to 10 per person and ticket sales at $150 are limited to two (2) per person with a total ticket limit of 10 per person. To charge by phone with a major credit card, call Ticketmaster at (800) 745-3000. Tickets also are available for purchase at www.mgmgrand.com or www.ticketmaster.com.

Seven of the MGM MIRAGE properties will host closed circuit viewing of Mayweather vs. Mosley. Tickets for the closed circuit telecasts at all venues are priced at $50, not including applicable service charges and handling fees are on sale now. All seats will be general admission and will be available at each individual property's box office outlets and at all Las Vegas Ticketmaster locations (select Smith's Food and Drug Centers and Ritmo Latino). To charge by phone with a major credit card, call Ticketmaster at (800) 745-3000, or visit www.mgmgrand.com or www.ticketmaster.com. Ticket sales are limited to 20 per person.

The finale of HBO®'s all-access reality series "24/7 Mayweather/Mosley" debuts Friday, Apr. 30 at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT. Episodes one thru three are available on HBO ON DEMAND®. All four episodes will air consecutively on Saturday, May 1 at 9:30 a.m. ET/PT on the main service.

The Mayweather vs. Mosley pay-per-view telecast, beginning at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT, has a suggested retail price of $54.95, will be produced and distributed by HBO Pay-Per-View® and will be available to more than 71 million pay-per-view homes. The telecast will be available in HD-TV for those viewers who can receive HD. HBO Pay-Per-View®, a division of Home Box Office, Inc., is the leading supplier of event programming to the pay-per-view industry. For Mayweather vs. Mosley fight week updates, log on to www.hbo.com.


Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Shane Mosley bout a rarity for boxing: It features two Americans

It's been more than 20 years since American boxing fans were regularly spoiled by exceptional fights between champions from the United States. The fighters were nearly unbeatable -- Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns, to name three, lost just five of 151 fights, apart from the bouts between them, from 1973 through 1991.

Their contests were almost always available on broadcast TV, and the battles themselves were riveting.

Such prize fights don't happen anymore, but Saturday night's bout between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Shane Mosley is as close as it gets. And when it's over, American fight fans again might have an awfully long wait for another of its kind.

Mayweather (40-0), and to a lesser degree Mosley (46-5), represents the last of the iconic U.S. fighters. But Mayweather, 32, the undefeated six-time champion in five weight classes, probably is not long for the sport. Once his career concludes, boxing may have another lengthy wait for a similar American champion of his renown.

"You've had that in boxing forever," said legendary cornerman Angelo Dundee, whose pupils included Muhammad Ali and Leonard. "You had the era of Joe Louis, the [Rocky] Marciano, the Ali, the Ray Leonard, but you ain't going to have no more of those guys. You've got to forget it because there are no duplicates in the profession. They were unique. They were different."

In the past two decades, most promising young fighters have been foreign born.

With Manny Pacquiao at the top of the list, foreign-born fighters have dominated the sport, and thus the prominent matches in recent years have included at least one participant born outside the United States. Americans, meantime, have embraced football as their contact sport of choice, and the allure of exorbitant salaries in the NFL and NBA has diminished boxing's appeal among young athletes.

"Part of what has happened is the sport has proliferated a lot more throughout the Hispanic community than it has it has in any of the other communities, so you're finding more and more fighters that come from elsewhere," said Rock Newman, who managed former world heavyweight champion Riddick Bowe.

Not since Mike Tyson has there been an American fighter who commanded equal and undivided attention from the boxing establishment and the casual fight fan. Years after his retirement, Tyson remains one of boxing's most recognized figures.

Following Tyson, Roy Jones, Bernard Hopkins, Pernell Whitaker and Oscar De La Hoya, among others, carried the mantle for American boxing. None of them quite reached the eminence of their predecessors. They also did not have the network television exposure those past champions had, and that has contributed significantly to the decline of the consummate American fighter, according to industry experts.

Major boxing now is the exclusive property of cable giants Showtime and HBO, which is broadcasting Mayweather-Mosley on pay-per-view. Only they are permitted to show highlights from those bouts, and that monopoly has severely limited boxing's ability to attract a mass audience.

"You got to remember, we had a little guru by the name of Howard Cosell. He was a genius," Dundee said of the late ABC Sports broadcaster who, along with Ali, helped boxing achieve then-unprecedented levels of popularity in the 1970s. "The fans got to know the talent before they became professional. We don't have that now, so you can't pooh-pooh what's happening. You do the best you can with what you got."

During the 1970s and '80s, when prizefighting remained enthralling thanks to American talent in the non-heavyweight divisions, every major network featured boxing programming, including ABC's hugely popular "Wide World of Sports" with Cosell.

NBC, which showcased boxing on its "Cavalcade of Sports" during the 1940s and '50s, recently dabbled in boxing on national television with "The Contender" in 2005. The short-lived program, which was hosted by Leonard, chronicled the lives of aspiring professional boxers competing against one another in a tournament-style format. It was canceled after one season.

"I'll tell you something that's so dramatically missing from boxing in the U.S., and that is it is devoid of network television," Newman said.

"All three networks consistently had programming that fascinated people, that captured interest in the growth of young fighters, so by the time they reached the stature to fight on closed-circuit television or pay-per-view, they had audiences that had been cultivated through their journeys into their living rooms on network television. . . . It's a time-tested successful model that doesn't exist anymore. You don't find that appeal without that exposure."

Some of boxing's current promoters appear to be listening. Richard Schaefer, chief executive of De La Hoya's Golden Boy Promotions, has said he plans to bring boxing to network television in the near future even though some analysts are predicting this fight, perhaps the most heavily promoted of all time, could set the record for pay-per-view buys.

"I believe this is the type of fight all fans around the world want to see," said Mosley, who has won titles in three weight classes.

Mayweather and Mosley can only hope their fight will evoke comparisons to some of the seminal bouts from decades ago, including Leonard-Hearns in 1981 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and Leonard-Hagler six years later at the same venue. The long-term viability of American boxing could be a casualty if it doesn't.

"Where you have quantity, quality comes. See, we haven't had quantity in the United States, the reason being we don't have the great amateur programs from when Muhammad was around, Leonard was around," Dundee said. "You had plenty of kids [involved in boxing]. College boxing was important. We don't have that no more.

"What's happening now is we've got Mayweather and Sugar Shane. That's going to create action. That's going to create activity. We'll have the next guy to fight Pacquiao, so these kind of fights are what gives you development."

Author: Gene Wang

Source: washingtonpost.com

KIZER HAS RECEIVED 15 DRUG TEST RESULTS ON MAYWEATHER-MOSLEY

The executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission reports that he has received 15 drug test results conducted on Floyd Mayweather Jr and Shane Mosley who face off at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on Sunday morning Manila Time in a fight to be telecast by Solar Sports with pound-for-pound king and “Fighter of the Decade” Manny Pacquiao sitting in on the panel.


Pacquiao whose megabuck super-fight with Mayweather fell through after Mayweather demanded USADA random drug tests up to 14 days before their planned May 1 fight and Pacquiao offered to have a 24 day cutoff with tests to be conducted in his dressing room right after the fight to prove he had nothing to hide in the wake of unsubstantiated allegations by the Mayweather camp and Golden Boy Promotions that the Filipino boxing hero was on performance enhancing drugs.

Pacquiao believes, as many fight experts do, that should Mayweather beat Mosley he will face Pacquiao sometime in November and used the drug test issue to get a good tune-up fight before facing Pacquiao who claimed Mayweather was scared of fighting him and losing his undefeated record.

The random drug tests were agreed upon by both fighters and were conducted by the United States Anti Doping Agency or USADA.

Kizer informed insidesports.ph, Standard Today and Viva Sports that the USADA had sent the random drug tests which included blood tests directly to him.

He disclosed that the results of 8 random drug tests on Mosley and 7 on Mayweather Jr were all negative.

Kizer earlier told us that the urinalysis conducted by the NSAC on both fighters were also clean and had no trace of any illegal substances.

Both Mosley and Mayweather Jr made their grand entrances at the lobby of the MGM Grand but while the crowds were there as usual there wasn't the kind of emotion and fanaticism that marked the arrival of Pacquiao for his past fights.

One noticeable fact was that Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer appeared to be more attentive to Mayweather than to Mosley who is a partner of Golden Boy Promotions.

Author: Ronnie Nathanielsz

Mayweather-Mosley capturing widespread interest with US public

The welterweight battle between Floyd Mayweather and Shane Mosley is capturing wide public interest here in the United States. No question about it. The lobby of the MGM Grand was packed for the Grand Arrival of the two fighters on Tuesday afternoon – just as it was when Ricky Hatton and Manny Pacquiao fought here in recent years – and protagonists Mayweather and Mosley had opposing ways of treating the melee. It might sound strange, but the mood on arrival, and the numbers turning out, has often reflected whether a fight has filtered out into the consciousness of the casual sports fan.

Mosley made a fleeting, perfunctory appearance before being ushered away to a VIP room off the lobby, where a phalanx of reporters awaited him. Mayweather simply soaked it all up, signing autographs for almost an hour before going through the same ritual with the media, although by the end of the news conference the unbeaten American welterweight dropped into a rambling monologue, sounding off about his own greatness and the lack of respect he is given. Plus ca change.

“When I beat him [Mosley], they are going to say he is old,” said Mayweather. “All these fighters get the belts that I gave up. When you are bigger than the sport, belts don’t mean anything. He needs a belt…A belt means something to him.

“All I can do is hope for the best. There is no limit to what we can do. The sky is not even the limit. If they did say a fight is going to do 700,000 homes, it will do something like 1.4 million. We can never predict a certain number. The ultimate goal is to always break records.”

Mayweather also returned to that recurring theme of his – USADA drug testing.

“There are all these athletes out there cheating. I am clean and pure. I know I am a clean athlete. I didn’t start taking vitamins until I was 30, so I know I am a clean athlete.

“You see so many different fighters going into comas and dying. All fighters are taking is a urine test. From what I hear, enhancement drugs are making these fighters punch harder and all it is doing is hurting the sport. I want to be able to separate the average from the good and from the great. I want to separate the ordinary from the extraordinary.”

Mosley was more circumspect. “I can box too. I have boxed guys I was supposed to punch out. This is what makes me Sugar Shane. Being able to box, being able to slip and slide, being able to do everything. Every time I fight, I’m looking to knock the guy out.

I don’t think I am going to spend the whole fight trying to outbox him. I am going to do everything Sugar Shane is supposed to do. Every fight has its own significance. This fight would be a great win. Beating Floyd would be a big feather in my cap.”

Mosley clearly fancies his chances of causing an upset. “He brings a lot of mouth and we’ll see what this mouth is about. He had to fight somebody if he wanted to be considered the best.

It’s not really what Floyd says or believes; it’s about what I believe. I see where he has slipped and I see some things where his body is beginning to go. But he doesn’t see that.

He has great defence. He’s a great fighter. That’s why we are looking at each other May 1. I am happy he accepted this challenge. Floyd says a lot of things that are sometimes out of line. I guess right now we are enemies. A lot of times when people say something that’s true it hurts. But then when they say something that isn’t true, it just rolls off your shoulder.

When they say those different things and I know they’re not the truth, I can’t change their mind. I know the truth.” On Saturday night, at the MGM Grand, we’ll find out just how good Mayweather is, and whether Mosley, the bigger man, has the power to unsettle the self-styled king of the ring.

Author: Gareth A Davis

Source: blogs.telegraph.co.uk

Shane Mosley: Floyd Mayweather fights fighters at the right time

Shane Mosley won't accuse Floyd Mayweather Jr. of ducking opponents.

Mayweather will fight you, says Mosley — but only when you've become an older, distracted, less-dangerous version of yourself.

"I think he was fighting fighters at the right time," Mosley said. "At the end of their careers or when they were going through something in life. I think he was trying to get them all at the right time."

When Mosley (46-5, 39 KO) enters the ring against Mayweather (40-0, 25 KO) on Saturday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, there are some who would say he's fallen into that trap.

He's 38 years old. He hasn't fought in 15 months. His wife filed for divorce last year.

But when it's pointed out to him that perhaps Mayweather took all those facts into consideration when he agreed to the fight in January, Mosley shows no concern.

In fact, he hopes it's true.

"Maybe he believes that's true," said Mosley, on whether or not he's past his prime. "Maybe that's why the fight is taking place.

"But I know that's not true. It's not what Floyd believes, or thinks or says. I don't care about all that. I care about what I believe, what I think and what I can do in the ring."

Whether Mosely's age or personal life will hinder him Saturday, there's no question fans will likely see the most motivated version of the fighter in his 17-year professional career.

As the world clamored for a matchup between Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, Mosley found himself on the outside looking in as arguably the No. 3 pound-for-pound fighter in the world.

He wanted one of the two. Either of the two.

So, when asked if it was fate that a potential fight between Mayweather and Pacquiao fell through at nearly the same time Andre Berto pulled out of a scheduled bout with him, Mosley can't help but smile.

"God always has a plan," Mosley said. "God's the best planner there is."

Mosley's lobbying for a mega-fight between one of the top two fighters in the world was never more obvious than on Sept. 19 last year.

As a representative of Golden Boy Promotions, Mosley entered the ring following Mayweather's unanimous decision win over Juan Manuel Marquez at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.

The two fighters then got into a confrontation when it became obvious Golden Boy was looking to promote Mosley as Mayweather's next opponent.

Mosley caught some heat for the events that night, as Mayweather's advisor Leonard Ellerbe accused him of looking "desperate."

Mosley, however, has insisted what happened was nothing he had planned before stepping into the ring.

"I think that I went over this already a couple times and I'm not sure if you guys are getting the picture," Mosley said. "I am a part of Golden Boy Promotions, that's the reason I was in the ring. The reason why I said something to him was because he called me over. He welcomed me into the conversation, and that's when I said what I did."

Now that he has the matchup he wanted, Mosley has done everything possible to prepare himself both physically and mentally to take advantage of the opportunity.

Mosley understands that many watching Saturday's fight, including the judges, will assume he'll use his strength and aggression to make Mayweather uncomfortable.

While he does plan on using those qualities to his advantage, he's mapped out a game plan that won't set an early standard for the judges to score by and potentially hurt his chances in the later rounds.

"I never want to get into a situation where I say, 'I'm going to pressure this guy,' and then I have to go in the ring and live up to pressuring him for the whole 12 rounds," Mosley said. "Because if I don't pressure him, they'll say, 'Oh, something must be wrong because he's not pressing him, so Floyd won the round.'

"I can box, too. I've out-boxed guys I was supposed to knock out. This is what makes me 'Sugar' Shane, — being able to box, being able to punch, being able to slip and slide and do everything that boxing requires."

If Mosley's plan works, he'll solidify his spot in boxing history Saturday. And he knows it.

As big as it was for his career when he became just the second man to defeat Oscar De La Hoya in 2000, becoming the first to beat Mayweather would trump it.

"Every fight has its own significance, but this would be a great win," Mosley said. "It would definitely be a feather in my cap if I beat Floyd Mayweather."


Author: Brett Okamoto

Source: lasvegassun.com

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