Pacquiao "not interested" in Cotto or Mosley, only Floyd or Marquez

Ronnie Nathanielsz reports that Manny Pacquiao is supposedly "not interested" in fighting either Shane Mosley or Miguel Cotto on October 17 (the date of his next bout), but instead is interested only in facing the winner of the July 18 fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Juan Manuel Marquez. Pacquiao is favoring Mayweather in that bout.

It's interesting because you can look at it one of two ways. The biggest fight is not Pacquiao-Mosley or Pacquiao-Cotto, period. It is Pacquiao versus the Floyd-JMM winner, and we all know that. Having "no interest" in fighting them, though? He seems set on that October 17 date, which is four months after the Mayweather-Marquez bout and assumedly plenty of time for either man to recover, but what if it's a hard fight? What if the winner isn't ready to go that soon? What then? At that point, Mosley or Cotto become the best opponent.

The Pacquiao Mania is pretty awesome and totally deserved, but it feels like we're all setting ourselves up for a letdown if he takes a "good" fight but not a great one in October. If he matches up with a guy on the level of Nate Campbell or Tim Bradley or the like (not that either is likely) instead of a Mosley or Cotto, people will complain. He won't be fighting a bad opponent, though. And frankly this is the type of situation you get sometimes with a great fighter. If he wants to fight, he's gotta fight someone, and the best just might not be available at that time.

But it looks like Mosley will be available. I truly think Freddie Roach and Pacquiao know that's a tough matchup. Mosley is much bigger than Manny at 5'9", and he's still a beast of a welterweight. It's a great fight and one I'd love to see, but I don't think the Pacquiao camp or Top Rank are exactly itching to make that, and for fair enough reasons. I think they absolutely see Manny as a 140-pound fighter save for a special occasion like Oscar or Floyd, where the money is so good that you'd be a fool to pass it up.

One other thing I was thinking about: It's too bad that the pricetag would be too high, because a Shane Mosley-Zab Judah fight on the Mayweather-Marquez undercard could've been a great idea at this point. It gets Shane in the ring in a should-win fight and there's still some decent name value going on there with Judah. I really wish Mosley would make a fight. Sadly I don't think the "big fights" he wants are coming.