• Steve Bunce

Stakes are high for Pacquiao in Vegas

Manny Pacquiao needs to knock out Shane Mosley in style © Getty Images

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The Manny Pacquiao-Shane Mosley fight at the weekend is another attempt to try and lever Floyd Mayweather Jnr out of "retirement", or whatever he is calling his current break from boxing.

When you look at the bout, there's a lot more at stake in Las Vegas than just the WBO welterweight title. Pacquiao knows he must do a better job on Mosley than Mayweather did last year, when he won every single round apart from the second, in which he was nearly stopped by a right hand.

An uninspiring 12-round decision for Pacquiao is hardly going to coax Mayweather back into the ring, while a loss for the Filipino would be a disaster - but an impressive win could just inch us further towards the mega-fight that most have given up on already.

Although I think Pacquiao will come out on top, Mosley is still quick enough to trouble him, even at 39 - and one of the things Pacquiao hates is speed. He's usually so much faster than anyone he ever fights, but here he finds himself up against a guy sharp enough to ask him some serious questions.

That said, I can understand why Mosley comes in as a 5/1 underdog, given the run of 13 straight victories that Pacquiao is on. In fact, I'm amazed the bookies have been that generous!

I say that because the fight is loaded in Pacquiao's favour - he's acknowledged as the pound-for-pound king, while Mosley has just lost to Mayweather and drawn against Sergio Mora. And when you look at how the fight is being discussed, the only question mark is whether Pacquiao will be the first man to stop Mosley - it's already assumed that he will win.

But there's no danger of Pacquiao showing any complacency. Under the guidance of Freddie Roach, he trains like he's about to go 12 rounds with King Kong, no matter who his next opponent is. I'm reliably told that Pacquiao's training was serious when he was sparring with Amir Khan - and that was a good six/seven weeks ago.

A large section of David Haye's fanbase could be disappointed © PA Photos

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Mosley's going to argue that however he loses, he can continue. If he goes down on points, I think he can still be involved in big fights going forward - and he would be a brilliant opponent for Khan later this year.

Twelfth Round

Haye ticketing storm
There was a big scare over the David Haye-Wladimir Klitschko fight on Saturday night when it was announced that the press conferences scheduled for this week were called off. Haye and Adam Booth, his manager and trainer, said there's no problem with the fight, but there's an issue with ticket allocations.

It stems from the people in Germany not knowing where the cameras will be positioned, so there's as many as 12,000 tickets being "held back" at present. That's a big problem, because Haye's working on being able to take 20,000 or so fans, and he could only be allocated 6,000.

But let me be clear, the fight is still on, 100%.

Haye feels he's given in on enough issues all the way through negotiations, that's the key here. Honestly, he would fight in front of 57,000 members of the Klitschko clan - but if suddenly tickets go on sale and they've all gone to the Germans, the English fans are going to turn on Haye, and he doesn't want that. He cares passionately about his supporters.

Barker shows his bite
Darren Barker won his European middleweight title fight against Domenico Spada comfortably at the weekend, but admitted afterwards he felt rusty. I think he is being too hard on himself, because he beat a world-ranked fighter comfortably after a 12-month period away from the ring. But now it gets serious - and he is good enough to make a mark at world level.

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