Steve Cunningham trained alongside Shane Mosley in Big Bear, CA recently and the Philadelphian confidently believes his pal will successfully defend his WBA Welterweight title against Floyd Mayweather on May 1.
Cunningham shares the same trainer as Mosley in the highly respected Brother Naazim Richardson who has been the architect behind several recent gameplans which have stunned the boxing world, particularly Mosley’s KO win over Margarito and Hopkins’ total domination of Pavlik. This time around, Richardson may score big again, says Cunningham.
“I was at Shane Mosley’s camp in Big Bear at his house and I kinda got an insight to the gameplan a bit,” says Cunningham, the former IBF Cruiserweight champion. “And it’s an awesome gameplan. I feel confident that Mosely’s gonna win. And the way Naazim trains – with him being such a genius of boxing, in the boxing world, he’s gonna really prove himself this fight above any other fight – that he’s the best trainer in the world. There’s gonna be no doubt after this fight. No doubt.”
Of course, Cunningham will not divulge any details – on the record or off – about the strategy, but he did say, “Shane always looks great, you know what I’m saying, he always looks great. Even after the Berto fight fell through. He left for a minute but he came right back and he’s still training. He reminds me of myself – we stay in the gym, we live in the gym. I mean, shoot, when you got a gym at your house, that’s serious. You can workout whenever you want. But he’s always in shape, always in camp. This thing between him and Floyd is gonna be a power of wills, power of mind. We know both of them are gonna be in awesome shape. Floyd’s always in great shape. And we know Shane’s a monster too. It’s gonna be a great fight but my money is on Shane Mosley.”
Mosley is well-liked by everyone in boxing and Cunningham reinforced that notion of him as a gentleman to be true. “Shane’s very nice gracious, nice dude. He lets us stay at his house at Big Bear and work. I got a chance to watch him work with Naazim and learn from that. Just to sit down and talk, shoot the craft, just have fun.” Mosley and Cunninghamdid not engage in any kind of sparring action though. “No, no, he’s way too small for me. But I’m sure he would. He would. He’s that type of guy. I’m sure he would.”
Cunningham has been working with Brother Naazim Richardson for about a year and shed some insight on why the big man with the modest and scholarly personality has been able to achieve such spectacular success in the past few years. “One thing about Brother Naazim – he lives boxing. He eats, sleeps video tapes. He studies boxing, he’s always talking boxing. Sometimes he bores us, we’re like, Ah man. But he’s like, Hey, come look at this fighter. No matter who it is, it can be a guy 5-0 or 1-0. Hey, come and look at this. He did this great. Hey, you should try this. That’s awesome right there. He really studies it. All day, every day, he’s looking at fight films, literally. And that’s no joke. He’s been doing this for years. And it shows in his teachings.”
Steve Cunningham, who has a record of 22-2 (two split decision losses) and 11 KO’s is expected to fight Troy Ross next for the vacant IBF Cruiserweight title.