Bryan Armen Graham

Manny Pacquiao, widely considered the world's best pound-for-pound fighter, is defending his WBO welterweight championship against "Sugar" Shane Mosley on Saturday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas (9 p.m. ET, Showtime PPV, $54.95).
The fight marks Pacquiao's second defense of the 147-pound title he won from Miguel Cotto in 2009. The first came against Josh Clottey in March 2010, after which Pacquiao moved up and beat Antonio Margarito for a vacant super welterweight title last November. That victory made Pacquiao the first boxer to capture world championships in eight different weight classes (from 112 to 154).
When Mosley shocked the heavily favored Antonio Margarito in January 2009, the demand for a Pacquiao-Mosley showdown reached an all-time high. How things have changed. Mosley followed up the Margarito coup with a 15-month layoff, a lopsided loss to Floyd Mayweather and a listless draw with mid-level contender Sergio Mora. Once considered one of boxing's most desirable matchups, Pacquiao-Mosley is now regarded as a mismatch. Yes, the 39-year-old Mosley is a former lightweight, welterweight and junior middleweight champion, but he's nowhere near the fighter who twice upset Oscar De La Hoya in the early 2000s. Most boxing people are asking not if Mosley can win but whether he can survive.
That's less an indictment of "Sugar" Shane -- a first-ballot Hall of Famer who's never been knocked out -- and more a tribute to Pacquiao, the eight-division champion who's become the face of boxing around the world. If he's not unequivocally the sport's greatest fighter (the inactive Mayweather is the other claimant to the mythical pound-for-pound title), then he's certainly the most exciting boxer today. The 32-year-old Pacquiao is a global phenomenon who's cracked the sporting mainstream like no other Asian-born athlete. He's been the subject of a 60 Minutes profile and was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people. He sings, he acts. He was elected to Congress in the Philippines last year and hobnobbed with President Obama in February. It's been more than six years since he lost a fight.