By Matt Stein: Rather than taking it easy in his old age, former boxing great Shane Mosley (45-5, 38 KOs) had decided to go out on his shield by taking on WBA welterweight champion Antonio Margarito (37-5, 27 KOs) on January 24th at the Staples Center, in Los Angeles, California. Of the last three fighters that have stepped in the ring with Margarito, in each case they’ve been stopped inside the distance and suffered a beating along the way.
Now Mosley, 37, wants to tempt fate and mix it up with Margarito, a fighter that averages over 100 punches per round in his fights. There’s a small minority of fans, including boxers that feel that Mosley has the experience and talent to beat the 30-year-old Margarito.
However, I’m not one of them and to be honest, I question the sanity of anyone that feels that Mosley actually has a chance in this fight. All you have to do is take a look at his last fight, a 12th round stoppage win over Ricardo Mayorga in September, to see how shot Mosley looked as a fighter.
If you go beyond that, immediately you see a loss to Miguel Cotto, wins over Luis Collazo, Fernando Vargas, Jose Luis Cruz and David Estrada, followed by two consecutive losses to Winky Wright in 2004. So what we’re looking at is a five year period and in that stretch of time, Mosley hasn’t been exactly impressive, losing three times against his best competition, struggling to beat Estrada and then getting wins over Collazo, Vargas and Cruz, none of which are in the same class as Margarito.
Styles make fights, some people say, but when it’s so obvious like this fight, you can forget about that old saying. Instead, you need to focus on the young beats the old and strong defeats the weak. Margarito, in this fight, is the younger, stronger, bigger and more active fighter. His work rate is much superior and unlike Vargas, who Mosley twice beat, Margarito has an excellent chin and will likely have no problem in taking Mosley’s occasional big shots.
A big problem for Mosley is that his speed has dropped off for him at the exact same time that his once impressive work rate has seen a drop off, too. For a fighter that was accustomed to winning with the use of his speed and fast twitch reflexes, Mosley doesn’t have the backup skills to compensate for the lose skills like some fighters do.
Mosley has never been a fighter that was considered highly technical. Rather than using any kind of expert boxing skills, Mosley seemed to get away with poor technique with his fast hands. Like Roy Jones Jr., now that he’s lost a step or two, Mosley is starting to take more and more punishment with each bout.
That probably won’t change against Margarito, who will be on top of Mosley from the get go and will be putting some serious hands on him and trying to take him out. If the fight had taken place earlier in his career, Mosley probably could have given Margarito huge headaches with constant movement and counter punching. That, for the most part, is all but gone for Mosley.
Now he fights hard for only small portions of the rounds and tends to try and fend of punches for the remainder. Hopefully, he’s been working on his defense because he’s going to be having a lot of punches thrown his way on January 24th. Look for Margarito to chop Mosley down round by round until he stops him in a brutal 7th round knockout.
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