• Junior middleweight

Mosley withdraws from bout over unpaid $700k

Shane Mosley has withdrawn from a junior middleweight fight with Anthony Mundine after the bout's promoters failed to pay him $700,000.

Millennium Events promoter Vlad Warton breached the terms of their deal, according to Mosley, who left Australia on Monday.

Mosley, the former three-division world champion, and Australia's Mundine, a former two-time super middleweight titlist, were scheduled to fight in a 12-round bout on Wednesday at the Sydney Entertainment Centre.

"I'm very disappointed with this turn of events because I was planning on making a big statement by beating Mundine, but I was left with no choice but to withdraw," Mosley said. "The fans in Australia have welcomed me with open arms, and I hope to return to fight for them one day in better circumstances."

The fight, for which there was virtually no public demand, had been in jeopardy since it was announced in late August. Even then there were issues over Mosley's purse. He was due a $300,000 advance payment - a portion of his $1 million purse - but it was late being put into escrow, forcing the announcement of the fight to be delayed.

The rest of the purse was due to be paid in advance of the bout, but according to Mosley and his promoter, Golden Boy, the deadline was missed and the remainder still hadn't been paid by Monday. Mosley will keep the nonrefundable $300,000.

"It's unfortunate for Shane, obviously, because he traveled halfway around the world and was excited about the fight," Golden Boy Promotions chief executive Richard Schaefer told ESPN.com. "His training camp went very well, and he was well prepared to go and win the fight. I am sure Anthony Mundine did the same. I feel bad for both athletes and the fans who had made arrangements to see the fight.

"This is not an easy decision from Shane and his team and our team to pull the plug. His management team and us couldn't allow him [to] go and fight and then have to go and chase money. There has been a pattern of breaches of his contract."

Schaefer said the contract stipulated that certain payments were to be made by certain deadlines and that Golden Boy had asked Warton "numerous times" for the contract breaches to be corrected.

"That has not happened," Schaefer said. "So, as a result, the team collectively decided that there was no way Shane would be able to participate in this fight, and he is on his way home.

"It's unfortunate that this fight will not be taking place, and we apologise to all of Shane's Australian fans, but there are contracts in place for a reason, and when the terms are not adhered to, we have no choice but to protect our fighter, and that's what happened here."

According to the Australian Daily Telegraph, the fight, to be carried on pay-per-view in Australia (as are all of Mundine's bouts), was going to be a commercial bust with it not coming close to an initially projected 80,000 pay-per-view buys. Also, the Daily Telegraph reported that only 1,500 of the 9,000 available tickets had been sold as of Sunday.

Mosley (47-8-1, 39 KOs), who turned 42 on September 7, is long past his best days as a lightweight, welterweight and junior middleweight champion, but won his last fight, a hard-fought 12-round decision against fringe welterweight contender Pablo Cesar Cano in May in Mexico. The victory ended Mosley's 0-3-1 winless stretch that included lopsided losses to Floyd Mayweather Jr., Manny Pacquiao and Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez in addition to a draw with Sergio Mora.

Mundine (44-5, 26 KOs), 38, has won versions of the super middleweight title twice, but later dropped down to junior middleweight, where he has fought three of his past eight bouts. However, in Mundine's last fight, he challenged countryman Daniel Geale for a middleweight world title in a rematch. Geale won a clear decision to avenge his only defeat, a split decision to Mundine in 2009.

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