Floyd Mayweather, Jr. and Shane Mosley: Where's The Beef?

This Saturday Floyd Mayweather, Jr. will finally get it on with Sugar Shane Mosley in Las Vegas in what many people believe could be the biggest fight of the year.

A fight so big that Golden Boy head honcho Richard Schaefer boldly predicted could eclipse three million PPV buys. A very big number considering the PPV record for a boxing match is 2.4 million buys for Mayweather-De La Hoya in 2007. 

Meaning that Schaefer is predicting that Mayweather-Mosley will not just break the all-time PPV record, he believes it will shatter the record. 

So, how is the big fight doing? I don't know what kind of pre-sales the fight has but I do know that there is absolutely no buzz for this fight at all. 

I know this because I've been stuck in my car driving for the last three days and I've been listening non-stop to sports talk radio.

During those three days I've heard about all I can take about the NFL Draft, the difficulties of the Lakers and even the Nascar spat between Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon BUT I've heard absolutely zip about the Mayweather-Mosley fight.

I expect that to change later in the week, but let's face it if the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight had come off there would be a lot of talk on the sports dial. The entertainment dial as well.

Another sign that Mayweather-Mosley isn't on the minds of the American public can be seen in online searches of the major search engines. 

As an example here are the top ten current search trends for Yahoo!

1. Miners' Memorial
2. Alex O'Loughlin
3. Bret Michaels
4. Hugh Hefner
5. Chelsea Clinton

1. Fat Princess
2. Taiwan Earthquake
3. Jon Stewart
4. Madonna
5. Thunderclap Head…

Neither fighter made the Top Ten even though Alex O'Loughlin, the guy who played opposite J-Lo in this weekend's rom-com box office bomb The Back Up Plan, managed to come in at Number three and Fat Princess, who or whatever that is, came in at number six. 

No Money, no Sugar Shane. This on the Monday prior to the big fight!

To give you an idea of what this means, consider that both Floyd and Manny Pacquiao were regulars in the Yahoo! Top Ten throughout their fight negotiations in late 2009 and early 2010. And Manny was in the top ten almost every day in the lead up to his fight with Joshua Clottey.

Does this mean that Mayweather-Mosley won't do any PPV business this weekend? 

I don't think that. I believe a lot of fight fans will definitely buy this fight and fight fans alone should get the numbers up to at least one million buys in my opinion.

There is, however, no doubt that this fight isn't the big deal that Golden Boy and the Mayweather brain trust thought it would be when they put the fight together. It just hasn't captured the imagination of the casual sports fan.

It will be interesting to see how the rest of the weekend plays out. But if the buzz doesn't pick up Richard Schaefer and Leonard Ellerbe will have a lot of explaining to do. 

And Money will probably have to revise his plan regarding negotiations with Pacquiao. Whether he wins or loses the fight.