LOS ANGELES, March 5 – Shane Mosley vowed Thursday to hand Floyd Mayweather jnr his first professional defeat as the two fighters touted their May 1 welterweight showdown in Hollywood style."This fight is going to be on May 1st, but it’s also going to be May’s first (defeat)," said Mosley as the fighters wrapped up their cross-country publicity tour in the sunshine of downtown Los Angeles.
After the obligatory nose-to-nose stare-down, each fighter reiterated his respect for the other – a contrast to some of the trash-talking that marked their earlier press conferences.
"Shane is out of character in this whole thing," Mayweather said of their previous acrimonious exchanges, including a shoving match in New York.
"He doesn’t talk trash. That’s not like him to call out somebody. I think Bernard Hopkins (Mosley’s business partner) put a battery in his back and pumped him up to say those things."
Mawyeather, who returned from near two-year layoff with a dominant victory over Juan Manuel Marquez last September, brings a record of 40-0 with 25 knockouts to the bout.
He had been expected to take on Filipino hero Manny Pacquiao on March 13, but negotiations unravelled over the American’s demands for unprecedented pre-fight blood testing for performance enhancing drugs.
Enter Mosley, who owns a record of 46-5 with 39 knockouts and was supposed to face Andre Berto in a unification bout in January before Berto withdrew to focus on family in Haiti in the wake of the earthquake there.
Golden Boy promotions chief executive Richard Schaefer insists Mayweather-Mosley can sell three million pay-per-view buys, which would make it the biggest pay-per-view fight in history.
Mayweather has sold about 4.5 million buys for his last three fights against Oscar De La Hoya, Ricky Hatton and Marquez, making him the sport’s top pay-per-view draw.
Mosley’s trainer Naazim Richardson said Mosley has the ability to stop Mayweather.
"Shane Mosley can knock out anything that weighs 147 pounds," said Richardson. "If a farm animal weighed that, Shane could knock him out. We’re going to have to convince this man that he has to learn how to lose. He can forget it after us, but he’s going to have to learn."
