Shane Mosley vs. Patrick Lopez on December 17th

By Boxing News - 12/03/2015 - Comments

mosleyBy Dan Ambrose: 44-year-old Shane Mosley (48-9-1, 40 KOs) will be back in the ring this month to face little known light welterweight Patrick Lopez (23-5-1, 14 KOs) on December 17th in a scheduled 10 round fight at the Arena Roberto Duran in Panama City, Panama, says Dan Rafael of ESPN.

Mosley had been doing a lot of talking lately about possibly fighting for a world title against WBO junior middleweight champion Liam Smith, but it looks like that fight didn’t materialize.

All Mosley has to show for himself is a fight against Lopez, and that has to be disappointing because this isn’t a big fight or even close to a big fight. It’s just a stay busy fight for Mosley.

The Mosley-Lopez fight will be at welterweight. Mosley is already ranked #7 by the World Boxing Association after just one fight against Ricardo Mayorga last August. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for Mosley to be ranked above #10 WBA Errol Spence Jr., because that’s a fight that the 44-year-old Mosley would likely lose and lose badly.

The WBA doesn’t make themselves look good when they rank a ring rusty Mosley above a fighter with the kind of talent that Spence has. That’s a senseless ranking, and just makes one think that Mosley is being ranked for his past accomplishments rather than what he’s done lately, which is pretty much nothing. Beating 41-year-old Ricardo Mayorga after being out of the ring for 2 years is accomplishing nothing.

Mosley is still the same fighter that was beaten by Anthony Mundine in 2013 and almost beaten by Pablo Cesar Cano in the same year. I can understand Mosley getting a top 10 ranking if he beat someone solid, but I don’t consider Mayorga a solid fighter at this point. He looked flabby, old, and wrinkled against Mosley.

“I stay ready,” Mosley said on his Twitter. “Left the gym at 153 (pounds) & still two weeks to fight. Easy work. I’m putting on a boxing clinic Dec 17th. No charge. I’m a bad man.”

Patrick Lopez has lost 3 out of his last 6 fights. He was beaten by Hank Lundy, Tim Coleman, and Karim Mayfield. The good news is that Lopez’s losses have come against quality opposition.

The bad news is that all of Lopez’s wins have come against terrible opposition. In other words, Lopez has never beaten anyone that you can call a good fighter. Each time he’s stepped up against decent level opposition like the above mentioned fighters, he’s lost. In addition to losing to Mayfield, Lundy and Coleman, Lopez has also lost to Josesito Lopez and Fernando Angulo.

If Mosley wants an important fight, then he’s going to need to start fighting on a more frequent basis against better fighters than Mayorga and Lopez if possible. Mosley doesn’t have all the time in the world to be messing around fighting guys like Lopez if he wants to be able to cash in with the remaining time that he has with his career. A fight against Lopez would have made sense for Mosley immediately after his fight against Mayorga, definitely not four months later. Mosley should have been facing better opposition instead of worse.



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