Mosley Needs To Retire

By Boxing News - 10/01/2008 - Comments

mosley3323445.jpgBy Aaron Klein: Although Shane Mosley may take comfort in the fact that he was able to stop Ricardo Mayorga with one second to go in the 12th round last Saturday night, I think he’s kidding himself if he believes that he can still be competitive against the best welterweights or light middleweights in the division. Mosley, 37, had been expected to wipe the deck with Mayorga going into his fight with him, and while that may have been a little bit too much to count on for a fighter who hadn’t set foot in the ring for almost a year, he was at least expected to be good enough to be leading the fight going into the 12th and final round.

Unfortunately for Mosley, he appeared well behind on the fight at the time of the stoppage, and badly in need of a miracle knockout to save him from defeat. Two of the judges’ scores were silly, because Mosley appeared to be losing the fight by a wide margin, and looked like he couldn’t pull the trigger anymore. In the last round, Mosley finally showed some of his old skills for long enough to drop a sloppy Mayorga, who was fighting wildly as if he were the one behind in the fight. Mayorga was in bad shape after getting up from the initial knockdown, and within seconds he was put down with a left hook from Mosley.

The knockout, however, doesn’t disguise the fact that Mosley looked 100 years old in the fight, and totally shot looking as a fighter. He was dominated by Mayorga in virtually every round, except for a couple of the middle rounds, and looked slow and lethargic. This was a fighter that Mosley should have easily beaten, if he had anything left in the tank. Mayorga, though younger than Mosley at 35, had looked bad in his last handful of fights, losing three out of six, two by knockouts. Excuses were made afterwards by Mosley, saying that he had problems with Mayorga’s awkward style.

You can say that again. However, I don’t believe his problems were because of Mayorga’s style or size, because this was a fighter that Mosley would have handled with relative ease seven years ago in his prime. I think Mosley had just reached a point where he can no longer fight as hard as he could earlier in his career, due to diminishing energy. This problem is compounded by the fact that his hand speed has decreased somewhat, making him more vulnerable to getting hit when he attempts to land his once blazing shots. He never did have much size at 5’9”, and was able to get away with it by having very fast hands.

Much of Mosley’s slippage in talent has been largely missed by the ignorant boxing fans, considering that Mosley has faced mostly soft opposition since 2005. Sure, Luis Collazo and Miguel Cotto are good fighters, but Collazo has no power, two of Mosley’s other opponents during that time – David Estrada and Jose Luis Cruz – weren’t in his class. The same goes for Fernando Vargas, who Mosley beat twice by stoppages in 2006.

It’s no wonder that after finally having to face a good fighter in Cotto that Mosley would lose. What surprised me, however, is how bad Mosley looked against Cotto and then Mayorga. I figured that Mosley looked so bad because he was facing someone much better than him in Cotto, but now that Mosley’s looked poor against Mayorga as well, I can see that he appears to be badly slipping as a fighter. The tragic thing is, he wants to fight the top welterweights in Antonio Margarito and Paul Williams.

The chance of facing Margarito, who would literally take his head off if given the chance, would seem remote in 2009, because of Margarito’s other planned bouts. As bad as Mosley looked on Saturday night, I wouldn’t want to see him face Margarito a year later in 2010, when Mosley will be even older than his is now. As far as a fight with Williams goes, that would be murder on the part of Williams. He would destroy Mosley as easy as Margarito would, probably even easier. I wouldn’t mind, though, seeing Mosley face Floyd Mayweather Jr., but that fight isn’t likely to happen because Mayweather, if he does come back, won’t want to face Mosley, given the fact that he’s not in the class of De La Hoya or Ricky Hatton in terms of popularity. It’s safe to say that Mosley will never in a million years face Mayweather.

Like I said before in an earlier article on Mosley, I think he’s better off trying to wrangle a bout with his Golden Boy Promotions boss, De La Hoya, who may find it appealing to give him a third chance at bout, maybe after De La Hoya has exhausted all his available big named opponents by 2011. By then, however, it won’t interesting because Mosley will look even worse than he is now.



Comments are closed.