By Jim Dower: Sometimes a fighter can grow old overnight. That was never more apparent in Saturday night’s bout between WBC light middleweight champion Vernon Forrest (40-3, 29 KOs) and former star from The Contender reality television boxing show Sergio Mora (21-0-1, 5 KOs), who pulled off an amazing upset of the 37 year-old Forrest beating him by a 12-round unanimous decision at the Mohegan Sun Casino, in Uncasville, Connecticut.
Forrest looked every bit of his ancient 37 years, as he quickly tired out after the third round and was easily beaten by the youthful, more active Mora. The final judges’ scores were 116-112, 115-113 and 114-114. I saw the fight being closer to 116-114, if not a little more than that in Mora’s favor. Forrest looked essentially like garbage, the worst I’d seen him fight since his dual losses to Ricardo Mayorga in 2003.
To look at Forrest struggling after only the 3rd round, gasping for breath and looking a little soft as if he was carrying 10-15 lbs too much weight, it was rather disappointing because most people had been looking forward to this match-up and were expecting a good fight. Instead, we saw Mora, a good fighter but not really a championship caliber opponent, winning almost by accident given the poor conditioning of Forrest. I don’t believe for a second that it was because of Forrest’s age that he lost, because he had looked much more energetic – and in shape – against his recent opponents Carlos Baldomir and Michele Piccirillo, both of which he easily beat while working hard the entire fight.
This time out, however, Forrest looked like slug by the 3rd round, too tired-looking to jab or fire off any meaningful combinations. This essentially allowed Mora to take command of the fight using mostly jabs, quick in and out attacks and fast nuisance-like attacks to beat the stronger Forrest. After the 3rd round, the fight was all Mora as he used a lot of deceptive movement, and lunching attacks to control the action. He seemed to just be the more energetic fighter of the two, and it helped him immensely because he was able to use his foot movement for the entire fight, circling Forrest and forcing him to fight hard when he wanted nothing more than to rest his weary body and take time off between action.
That was something that Forrest wasn’t able to do if he wanted to win this fight, because Mora was all action, never letting up on his for a moment. It looked as if Forrest thought he’d be able to get by with pot-shotting Mora, loading up and hitting him with an occasional big punch. In theory, that might work but the problem with that tactic is that Mora made Forrest miss a lot of the time with tricky movement. Even when Forrest did land big shots, it wasn’t going to be enough because Mora has a good chin, and Forrest doesn’t have one-punch power, and never did. As the rounds went by, Mora became bolder and bolder looking almost cocky by the 5th round.
For his part, Forrest appeared to have fought an entire 12-round bout by this point, breathing hard and appearing defeated already. Mora outworked him with mostly jabs and a lot of movement. The crowd seemed to really hate Mora’s style of fighting, booing after almost every round. This was in part because Mora tends to fake a lot, trying to get his opponents out of position, then attacking quickly. It works for him, but yeah, it’s painful to watch at times.
Forrest, though, had no clue what to do with him and treated Mora with the utmost respect. Instead of using his jab, which Forrest’s trainer Buddy McGirt was pleading him to do, he mostly stood and posed in front of Mora, occasionally throwing a big right hand. Whatever McGirt wanted from Forrest, it wasn’t happening and it wasn’t going to be happening either, because his body, mind or whatever, wasn’t going to make that happen. But, it was incredibly disappointing because a prime, in shape Forrest would have easily have beaten Mora, who was anything but impressive on Saturday.
I do congratulate Mora on the victory, but it was more of a case of what Forrest wasn’t doing – or couldn’t do – than what Mora was doing in the ring. Against a good light middleweight, like Oscar De La Hoya, James Kirkland or Sergeii Dzinziruk, they would have made easy work of Mora no matter how much he ran around the ring trying to preserve himself. Forrest, though, faded in rounds seven through twelve and looked like a dying car battery. Other than a decent round in the 8th, in which he landed some big shots in the first half of the round before tiring and taking punishment (annoying weak shots, mostly) in the second half, that was pretty much it for Forrest.
Along the way, Mora was warned repeatedly, but not penalized, for a number of rabbit punches he landed to the back of Forrest’s head. Forrest, too, was guilty of his own abuses, landing a small number of low blows. Thankfully, Mora was big enough not to respond in kind and turn the fight into an uglier bout than it already was. Afterwards, De La Hoya’s name was mentioned as a fighter than Mora would like to fight in his next bout. Strangely enough, Mora whom had said that he would vacate the title if he should win it, said nothing about giving up his newly one title.
A good thing, too, because I don’t think he could ever in a million years win a title in his normal weight class, the middleweight division. He’s too average, too weak and finesse oriented to beat the stronger fighters in the middleweight division. He really needs to think hard about staying at light middleweight because he’s not a bad fighter in the division, and has good boxing ability that can give many, as we just saw, of the top fighters a lot of trouble. He kind of reminds me of a junior middleweight version of Chris Byrd.