Alvarez gives Mosley a beating

By Boxing News - 05/06/2012 - Comments

Image: Alvarez gives Mosley a beatingBy Allan Fox: WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez (40-0-1, 29 KO’s) gave 40-year-old Shane Mosley (46-8-1, 39 KO’s) a pretty good reason why he should consider retirement by giving Mosley a serious beating last Saturday night in a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision victory at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Mosley took a lot of heavy shots in this fight, more than you like to see a fighter take. It’s not that he wasn’t fighting back, but rather he lacked the power and the size compete with the stronger 21-year-old Alvarez. The judges scored it 119-109, 118-110 and 119-109. Other than the 1st round, I didn’t see Mosley doing well. Mosley’s problem, besides an inability to pull the trigger and land with any kind of accuracy, was his lack of power. He was so weak compared to Alvarez.

It was shocking how much weaker Mosley was than the younger fighter. At one time, Mosley could punch with power, but seems to have lost his strength with age. Mosley seemed to be punching with his old lightweight power rather than someone weighing 154 and fighting in the junior middleweight division. He was able to load up one big shot on rare occasions, but the shots were still so much weaker than the punches that Alvarez was routinely hitting Mosley with over and over again in each round. This fight should have been stopped by Mosley’s corner by the midpoint of the bout because all he did was take punishment for 12 round sickening rounds. It was a sad fight to watch seeing Mosley get pounded. What got me was how old and feeble Mosley looked. He looked elderly person who had stumbled into the ring and was just taking shots one after another.

Mosley did expose some flaws in Alvarez’s game in losing. First off, Alvarez has very questionable stamina. He looked exhausted by the 7th round and was lucky he was in with an old weak guy like Mosley. Secondly, Alvarez is easy to hit, and seems to react with anger when he gets punched. It’s predictable. When Alvarez gets hit, he comes storming forward like the junior middleweight division’s version Marco Huck and tries to immediately pay back his opponent. That’s going to hurt Alvarez when he someday in the future finally faces his first quality opponent. When that’ll happen I have no idea, but it looks like Golden Boy Promotions is mainly putting him in with old or weak guys that shot or don’t have much ability. One of these days, Alvarez will have to face someone like Erislandy Lara, and I see him having problems.

Mosley did a lot of clinching and pulling down on Alvarez’s head in the second half of last night’s fight. He trying different things and none of it was working. In the last four rounds, Mosley started fighting Alvarez on the inside, throwing pitty pat weak shots and forcing the exhausted looking Alvarez to fight harder than he’s accustomed to. In the 9th round, Alvarez hurt Mosley with a nice left to the body with a punch that Alvarez put everything he had into it. He seemed to be trying to get Mosley out of there with one shot, because he was bothered by Mosley’s constant work rate. However, after landing six additional body shots, Alvarez had to rest to catch his breath and that let the hurt Mosley off the hook.

In the 11th and 12th, Mosley tried his hardest to score a knockout but he was shooting with blanks for the most part. His power shots had no affect on Alvarez, who merely took the light punches and fired back with huge shots that would often snap Mosley’s head back.

By far, this is the worst beating I’ve ever seen Mosley take in a fight. His loss to Manny Pacquiao wasn’t as bad as this one because Pacquiao let up on him, but not Alvarez. He seemed to be working hard for a knockout but was foiled due to Mosley’s great chin and Alvarez’s limited conditioning.



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