During the last two weeks, WBA welterweight champion "Sugar" Shane Mosley has been aggressively pursuing fights with Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. Also during this time, Paul "The Punisher" Williams, has been trying to get Mosley in the ring. Williams' promoter Dan Goossen became upset when he made his daily run to BoxingScene.com and saw a particular news brief that caught his attention very quickly.
"I've been patiently ignoring commenting on observing Shane Mosely beg for fights against the smaller Manny Pacquiao and come backing Floyd Mayweather, while turning his back on the BEST Welterweight in the World today, Paul Williams. As much as I wanted to say a thing or two regarding this oversight, I gave Shane the respect of keeping quiet, which as you know is tough for me to do. But enough is enough," Goossen said.
"What got me to break my silence was reading the story by BoxingScene.com's Mark Vester with quotes from Oscar de la Hoya, Shane's promoter, saying ' Mosley would crush Pacquiao in a heartbeat. That's why I think it would never happen. Mosley is willing to come down in weight and take a smaller share of the pot, which show you he wants to fight the best. Obviously that's an admirable quality," De La Hoya told Mike Rosenthal of The Ring Online.'"
Goossen is very confident with Williams. Regardless of the risk, or the weight, Goossen is willing to make the fight. Whether it be Bernard Hopkins, Kelly Pavlik, Sergio Martinez or Mosley, Williams is ready to fight them all. His last fight, in April against Winky Wright, was at 160-pounds. Williams, before moving on to bigger and better things, wants to tie up any loose ends at 147-pounds. By dominating Wright [who beat Mosley twice], Williams thought he could lure Mosley to the table. He was wrong.
Goossen is tired of hearing Mosley's excuses about securing fights that bring him the most money. Goossen is ready to offer Mosley his biggest purse since 2007. It remains to be seen if the money Goossen is offering up is enough to get Mosley interested. He promises not to beg or resort to name calling to make the fight happen.
"Simply said, the best welterweight (141 pounds to 147 pounds) in the world today is Paul Williams. Throw Shane, Manny, Floyd, Miguel (Cotto) into the mix, it doesn't matter, Paul is still the best welterweight. As a matter of fact, we believe he is also the best Super Welterweight and Middleweight fighter in the world and there's probably an argument to be made for him at 168 pounds too. Now that's a real pound-for-pound fighter to lead our sport," Goossen said.
"Now if Oscar truly believes Shane wants to fight the best it can get done with Williams. We won't beg. We won't call Shane names. No, we will just say if he REALLY wants to fight the best, than Shane's thinking exactly the way Paul is and willing to prove it in the ring. Every built-in excuse can be used not to fight Paul, which would probably be the same excuses Shane is accusing Mayweather of using against him. If, in fact, he would resort to this, it would be inaccurate. I can confidently say we would guarantee a purse to Shane that is higher than any he's been guaranteed in any given fight since 2007."
Despite being upset, Goossen agreed with De La Hoya on one item - he doesn't believe a fight between Mosley and Manny Pacquiao will ever happen.
"Oscar also said in this piece, "I just don't feel Freddie and Manny will do it. ... Mosley is too big a threat...And it's why he's (Freddie) not going to risk his fighter's pound-for-pound status against a real champion like Mosley."
"I agree with Oscar the fight won't happen. Now lets see if Shane is willing to risk his status against a real champion like Paul Williams? Obviously if he did, that would be an admirable quality," Goossen said.
BoxingScene would contact Richard Schaefer, CEO for Golden Boy Promotions [who promote Mosley], to get his opinion on the matter. Schaefer doesn't see a Mosley-Williams fight happening. He says Mosley is very particular about the fights he currently wants, and Williams is not one of those fights. Schaefer doesn't believe that any of the top welterweights are going to fight Williams. He says the best road for Williams is to chase fights at 160 or 168, divisions where opponents are more likely to accept his call.
"I don't think that fight is going to happen. Right now Shane wants the biggest fights out there; Miguel Cotto, Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr," Schaefer said.
"Williams should look at the other weights. If he were to fight Mosley, and let's say he beat him - then what? None of the other welterweights are going to fight him. At 160 he has Felix Sturm, Arthur Abraham and Kelly Pavlik. He can go to 168 and fight Chad Dawson. Williams is a good fighter. Williams is very nice, very polite, but if I was his promoter - I would look for fights at 160 or 168-pounds, where he won't have so many problems [getting fights]."
Two days after former cruiserweight champion David Haye pulled out of a June 20 fight against unified heavyweight titlist Wladimir Klitschko because of a bad back, Klitschko replaced him with Ruslan Chagaev on Friday, Klitschko manager Bernd Boente told ESPN.com.
Boente said he made a verbal deal with Chagaev promoter Peter Kohl of Universum, the German company that promoted Klitschko for several years before a falling out.
"We will now exchange the contracts, but we have verbally agreed with each other on the Chagaev fight. The fight is on," Boente said from Germany. "We are all absolutely thrilled because this is an even bigger name and he is unbeaten. Chagaev offers something. It shows Wladimir's class, too, that on short notice he accepts this strong guy and has to change his training to prepare for a different kind of fighter because Chagaev is a southpaw."
Haye had asked Klitschko to delay their fight until July 11, insisting that he would be OK to fight with a brief delay, but Klitschko (52-3, 46 KOs) declined.
Klitschko-Chagaev will still take place at Veltins Arena, a soccer stadium in Gelsenkirchen, Germany that was a 60,000-seat sellout for the Haye fight. However, the biggest difference in the new arrangement is that HBO, which was on board for the Haye fight and had televised Klitschko's last nine fights plus many others, declined the buy the Chagaev fight.
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JENS KOEHLER/AFP/Getty Images Ruslan Chagaev (right) has verbally agreed to fill in for the injured David Haye.
"We are passing on Chagaev for June 20," HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg told ESPN.com. "We are only interested in a rescheduled Haye fight for July 11."
It's been a wild week for the heavyweights.
Last Saturday, Chagaev (25-0-1, 17 KOs) was supposed to challenge titleholder Nikolai Valuev in a rematch in Helsinki, Finland. But the day before the fight, Chagaev's pre-fight blood test came back with a level of hepatitis B high enough that Finnish officials would not allow him to take part.
Despite Chagaev's suspect blood tests, Klitschko is willing to face him, Boente said. In Germany, the rules are different than in Finland and his hepatitis levels are acceptable.
"It's only an antigen he is testing positive for," Boente said. "He has had it for five years and the doctors told us the chances that Wladimir is infected by this guy are about as much as the sky falling on our heads."
Because Klitschko travels so often, Boente said he had already been inoculated against it and that he would also take a post-fight injection if his doctor recommends it.
"The doctor tells him it's absolutely no problem," Boente said.
Adam Booth, Haye's trainer and manager, said the injury would have been fine after a short rest.
"Unfortunately David has sustained a back injury, which means he is unable to continue training for a short period," Booth said. "We're heading back to the UK [from training camp in Cyprus] for some aggressive physiotherapy. It looks like there will be only a three-week delay from the original fight date with respect to David's readiness, which hopefully means that Wladimir will only postpone the fight, rather than cancel it."
Said Haye, "I hope that once I have had the sufficient treatment, I will be able to start training again and we can get the fight on as soon as possible. I know this is the fight the fans want and I will do everything to make sure it happens."
It won't, at least not on June 20, although it is possible that Klitschko could face him in the fall.
Valuev, whose only loss came against Chagaev in a title bout, was Klitschko's initial target after Haye pulled out, but Valuev was not interested, Boente said.
There were numerous inquiries from such fighters as Roy Jones, John Ruiz, Odlanier Solis, Kevin Johnson, Brian Minto, Chazz Witherspoon and others about stepping in for Haye. However, after Valuev declined, Klitschko turned to Chagaev, a former titleholder who lost his belt when he was demoted by one of the organizations to "champion in recess" because of injury and illness that caused him to cancel three title defenses.
Haye had asked the Klitschko camp to simply delay the fight until July 11, but Klitschko refused, Boente said.
Klitschko and his team had been considering the postponement, but when it still hadn't received a medical report on Haye's injury by Friday afternoon, they opted for Chagaev.
"We have only heard from them about this injury but not received the medical report," Boente said. "The main obstacle in Wladimir's mind was that we can never count 100 percent on Haye. The options were Chagaev on June 20 or delay the Haye fight to July 11. But the big obstacle was that we don't know that suddenly Haye doesn't cancel again because his back is still not 100 percent. Then with the summer vacations in Europe, we can't do a fight until the fall. We couldn't take that risk."
The Klitschko team was disappointed by HBO's decision to decline the fight.
"Nobody can understand it," Boente said. "HBO they told us they don't want Chagaev. I think that is not acceptable."
Greenburg stuck to his guns.
"It's not a fight we would be interested in," he said. "We want to save our money for later in the year if Wladimir is going to come back and fight again. We think that the Haye fight was going to be a good fight in the ring. I'm not expecting a lot out of Wladimir vs. Chagaev, so it was a pretty easy decision. If we had bought this now, we would not have had anything else left for Wladimir this year if anything else pops up, like a rescheduled David Haye fight, a Cris Arreola fight, anything that has some pop to it."
Boente said he would talk to Showtime and ESPN about acquiring American television rights.
Dan Rafael
Technically, Roach is his boxing trainer...Freddie probably just didn't want to waste his time at a MMA event or had other stuff. I'veheard that Moore sparred with him a few times....and dropped Andrei Arlowski (sp?).Originally Posted by Bigmike23
Michael moore was training some dude that had a fight on showtimes MMA card tonight. dude got KNOCK THE $%** OUT
But after back-to-back crushing knockouts, it's doubtful Arlovski is going to get another fight of similar magnitude anytime soon.
He was so confident of a victory on Saturday that he'd already agreed to a boxing match on June 27 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. That, too, went out the window when he got knocked out by Rogers.
Arlovski's boxing handlers were excited by his potential and believed he had the skills to compete for a title. His confidence, though, is now as shattered as his chin.
Side-note: Me and my homies were arguing last night who would win in a fight.....a world-class boxer or a world-class MMA fighter. Of course, I was backingboxers.....but I wondered what you guys think. I'm thinking about making it a thread.
Originally Posted by LESGodSonC0
On a side-note, will any of you guys be at the Garden this weekend? Finally get to see the man in action...Sec 210.
