Source: Dan Rafael
After brief negotiations to stage a fight between newly-crowned WBC junior middleweight titleholder Sergio Mora and fellow Los Angeles native Shane Mosley fell through thanks to the dethroned Vernon Forrest threatening litigation over a rematch clause, Golden Boy's Richard Schaefer and Shane's wife/manager, Jin, are now in advancing talks with Don King to match "Sugar" Shane up with Ricardo Mayorga in October.
Carl King, Mayorga's manager, told ESPN.com on Sunday night: "We are talking. We're ready, willing and able. This is the fight we want. It's a fight we've been wanting for five years. Shane is one of the most decent guys in the sport. He's always been a class act. I think it's a good fight for both guys. It's a better fight for Ricardo than some of the other fights out there for him."
Mr. King is right if you're talking about Mayorga versus Mosley or Mayorga against middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik, but this is still a terrible matchup for Mayorga. Whereas Pavlik would take Ricardo's head off, Mosley will simply beat him into humility, the same way Oscar de la Hoya did, the same way Felix Trinidad did before that.
I love Mayorga, as I've said on countless occasions. He's a great villain, a great showman, a great trash-talker, and a great brawler. But Mosley is not on a different level than Mayorga, he's three levels above him. We're long removed from the Mayorga who played head games with Vernon Forrest and beat him two times, the second time being fairly questionable as is.
What is the last really good win or even performance on Mayorga's record? It was the Forrest rematch. And that was five years ago. I loved his fight last year with Fernando Vargas, but Vargas had already been ripped apart by Mosley prior to that, and plus they were fighting at an exhibition catchweight of 164 pounds.
Since that second Forrest win, Ricardo has beaten Eric Mitchell, Michele Piccirillo and a spent Vargas. He has lost to Cory Spinks and been brutally thumped by Oscar and Tito.
Whether it takes place at 147 or 154, Mosley (44-5, 37 KO) will beat the crap out of Mayorga (29-6-1, 23 KO).
But here's the catch: it's great business. Mayorga sells fights, which is something Shane's never been great at doing. He's a Hall of Fame-level fighter and a good guy and has a lot of fans, but Shane has never been a true superstar that's really crossed over in the mainstream. Outside of the fights with Oscar -- who could have sold the Steve Forbes fight on PPV at the time -- the most famous Shane has gotten has been the BALCO scandal.
King and Mayorga know how to sell Mayorga as a dangerous opponent, even if we all know he's really not. And it's not like the fight will be dull. When Mayorga loses, generally speaking, he loses. He takes a beating and does the best he can to dish some back. Shane is too fast, too slick, and too good, but the Oscar and Tito fights were entertaining in their own ways, and both of those guys were way too good for Ricardo, too.
For Shane, it's a high-profile win to keep his career going and maybe wrangle a rematch out of Miguel Cotto in 2009. For Mayorga, it's a chance to keep his career going, period. He's 34, not getting younger, and is rumored to fight way more often than he actually does. He's become a once-a-year guy.
So yeah, makes perfect sense to me. If they paired this with Casamayor-Marquez, that'd be an aces pay-per-view if you ask me.