It ended with a smattering of boos, as the bout had settled into a predictable rhythm. Perhaps the fans had been made dim with too much drink and too many nights spent at breasty emporiums and industrial strength stage shows.
Still, it was just 10 rounds removed from what should be recalled as the unlikely, if incontrovertible proof of Floyd Mayweather’s greatness.
That was back in the second. Mayweather had come out with his customary peek-a-boo stance. Problem was, that left hand he holds low around his waist, and with such arrogant precision, made him vulnerable to an overhand right. First, Shane Mosley — who was nothing if not bigger and stronger than Mayweather — caught him with a 1-2. Then, some seconds later, came that big overhand right. Mayweather buckled. Actually, he did more than buckle. It was a swoon, about as close as he could get to hitting the canvas.
“I felt he was gonna go down,” said Oscar De La Hoya, who famously lost to both men. “I didn’t think that he was going to be able to handle that punch.”
Nor did most of the 15,117 in attendance at the MGM Grand Garden. They had begun to chant — “Mos-ley! Mos-ley! Mos-ley!” There rose an anticipation of a great fighter’s great fall.
Mosley would recall thinking: “I need to knock him out.” But after recovering his footing, Mayweather just smiled, as if to say: “You didn’t hurt me.” A lie, of course. He’d been hurt, badly. Two rounds in, the undefeated fighter who fancies himself the best boxer of this era (perhaps, he is) or any other (still a preposterous claim), looked perilously close to suffering the first loss in his 41 professional fights.
“He was hurt,” said Mosley. “He was hurt real bad. I think that’s the most he’s ever been hurt in his whole career.”
But there’d be no knockout. No knockdown. A lot will be said about Mosley’s advanced year. At 38, he can’t do what he could a decade ago in his prime. But that misses the point, and diminishes the glory Mayweather now deserves.
“True greatness,” De La Hoya called it.
It wasn’t about speed. It wasn’t about age. It was about something both fans and fighters haven’t had much chance to judge: Mayweather’s chin. For the record, he said he’d been hit harder by DeMarcus “Chop-Chop” Corley and Zab Judah. But neither of those fighters have Mosley’s pedrigree. As it ended, "Pretty Boy" Floyd could issue a LaMotta-like boast: I never went down.
“I could see in the second round everybody was whooping and hollering and going crazy, but I knew what it took,” he said. “Look, it’s a contact sport you’re gonna get hit.”
What happened, Mayweather was asked.
“What happened is, I’m a fighter.”
Judges Dave Moretti and Adalaide Byrd saw the fight 119-109. Robert Hoyle had it 118-110. I had Mayweather winning every round but the second.
“I did what the fans came here to see, a toe-to-toe battle,” he said. “That’s not my style, but I wanted to give them that kind of fight.”
Don’t get the impression the bout devolved into any sort of brawl. If it had been, no matter how crude, the high rollers wouldn’t have expressed any displeasure at the end. In fact, it was more tactical than rugged.
“I tried to move around, but he was too quick and I was too tight,” said Mosley, referring to stiffness in his neck. Bottom line: “I couldn’t adjust, and he did.”
“I just went back to my corner and told myself to relax,” said Mayweather, who started slipping Mosley’s soft jab and countering with a right.
“A pull-counter,” he said. “Before his jab gets back you already hit him with a right hand.” Again and again, and again.
Mosley tried to bull him against the ropes. In the eighth, referee Kenny Bayless warned Mosley about the wrestling. Next, the two fighters returned to the center of the ring — where Mayweather managed to keep the action for most of the 12 rounds — and the two fighters touched gloves and began to discuss the matter. These words went on way too long. Finally, Mayweather thought to crack Mosley with a 1-2, a combination that made Mosley look like the worse kind of sucker.
It was over by then. The talk was already of pairing the best fighters on the planet: Mayweather and Manny Pacquaio. There’s only one problem, of course. Mayweather wants Olympic-style drug testing.
“If Manny takes the test we can make the fight happen,” he said. “If he doesn’t, we don’t.”
In a just world, the fighters or their camps wouldn’t make these decisions. They’d be made for them by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. Olympic-style drug testing? Fine. Great. The bureaucrats should start making arrangements, else denizens of The Strip forget all but the cheapest thrills.
