12.01.07 – Sugar Shane Mosley and Luis Collazo have come face to face to announce their February 10 clash titled “Battle at the Bay” at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, USA on HBO World Championship Boxing. The WBC interim welterweight world title will be on the line.
“I had two opponents to choose from for this fight,” said Mosley, “Kermit Cintron and Luis Collazo and in the end, Kermit had some problems and we decided on Collazo. Luis is a difficult fighter because he is a southpaw and he is going to come with everything and try to beat me. However, my goal is to continue to win and I will win this fight.” 35 year-old Mosley 43-4 (37) is coming off back to back stoppage wins ove r Fernando Vargas in 2006..
“This is my time and I believe that it is time for Shane to pass the torch,” said Collazo. “I want to be the new world champion and on February 10, I will melt Sugar. Puerto Rico and the boricuas from New York will be very proud of me.”
25 year-old Collazo 27-2 (13) lost the WBA welterweight world title in a close twelve round points decision to Ricky Hatton on May 13 last year, before returning with a 6th round TKO win over Artur Atadzhanov on November 4.
The Mosley-Collazo fight is being promoted by Golden Boy Promotions and Don King Productions.
With current WBC welterweight world champion Floyd Mayweather moving up in weight to challenge WBC junior middleweight world champion Oscar De La Hoya on May 5, the WBC are allowing Mosley vs. Collazo to be for an Interim world title at welterweight. If Mayweather does not fight the winner of Mosley-Collazo later in 2007 for whatever reason, the Interim champion would then be declared the full WBC welterweight world champion.