Mosley-Berto: Does Shane still have it?

By Jason Kim: 38-year-old WBA welterweight champion Shane Mosley (46-5, 39 KO’s) will be taking on World Boxing Council welterweight champion Andre Berto (25-0, 19 KO’s) in a unification bout later this month on January 30th, at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Mosley looked good in his last fight, a 9th round stoppage of then WBA welterweight champion Antonio Margarito in January 2009.

However, that was a year ago, against a slow fighter who reportedly had problems making weight for the fight. Berto, 26, is younger, faster and at the top of his game right now. This isn’t an opponent that Mosley is going to be able to out-quick or be able to use his hand speed advantage over to get a win. I think Mosley is going to show his age on January 30th, and look old all of a sudden in front of boxing fans.

Shane has fought only once a year for the past couple of years, because he’s been looking for one big fight that will give him a huge payday. Instead of staying busy and focusing on taking on the best possible opponent in his division, Mosley has lost out on multiple fights and paydays with his searching for the big fight. The fight against Berto isn’t going to be a huge payday for Mosley, but it will be a fight against the best possible opponent that he can get, short of landing a near impossible fight against fighters like Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao.

But I see the age factor suddenly rearing its ugly head against Berto in this fight. Mosley didn’t look good against Ricardo Mayorga two fights ago, struggling to beat him and coming up with a 12th round knockout to get the win in September 2008. I had Mayorga winning the fight at the time of the stoppage. Many boxing fans saw that fight and figured that Mosley would be destroyed by Margarito.

Margarito came into the fight after battling weight problems and had big problems with Mosley’s punch and grab technique he used all night long. It worked perfectly, shutting down Margarito’s offense completely to the point where he was barely able to get a shot off before being grabbed in a clinch by Mosley.

That kind of fighting style works for aging fighters well. However, that style doesn’t work against a fighter with blazing hand speed like Berto. He’ll be able to land flurries as Mosley comes reaching in trying to clinch. I think Mosley needs to stay away from clinching in this fight and focus on another strategy like jumping in and out.

I think Mosley may have lost something in the time away from boxing in the past year. I think he’s still an elite fighter, but I think he’s going to be slowed to the point where Berto will easily dominate him over 12 rounds. Berto is vulnerable, as he showed in his struggle to beat Luis Collazo last year in January.

However, Berto fought the wrong fight in that bout, wasting time trying to fight Collazo on the inside and clinching too much. Berto would have been better off had he stayed on the outside and used his fast combinations to control the fight. I think this is what Berto will do against Mosley, and in the process, he’s going to make Mosley look every bit of his 38 years.

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