By Sean McDaniel: The fight that may have gone to Antonio Margarito, looks as if the new WBA welterweight champion Shane Mosley is now sitting in the perfect position to land a bout with the winner of Manny Pacquiao vs. Ricky Hatton on May 2nd. Mosley pulled off what many people thought impossible by knocking Margarito down twice, dominating him and stopping him in the 9th round on Saturday night in a complete one-sided fight at the Staples Center.
The win vaults Mosley into the position where he may make more money than he could have ever imagined a couple of years ago. Back then, Mosley was biding his time in fights against Fernando Vargas and Luis Collazo, trying to rebuild his career after two losses to Winky Wright in 2004. At best, it was thought that maybe Mosley could somehow get a third fight with Oscar De La Hoya or maybe get lucky by landing a fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. None of those things happened, of course.
Instead, he took a big career risk at the ripe age of 37 and decided to take a big chance in fighting Margarito, a fighter considered to be one of the two best welterweights in the division behind Paul Williams. With the odds of 4-1 going against him, Mosley pulled off a near miracle in defeating Margarito and proving a lot of people wrong.
Now, Mosley is on top of the world and in a great position to get either Pacquiao or Hatton in a huge fight sometime late in 2009 if everything goes well. Pacquiao would seem to be the one that will emerge as the winner of the Hatton-Pacquiao fight, so we may well be seeing two almost evenly sized fighters. Mosley is only 5’9”, while Pacquiao comes in close to 5’7”.
The size advantage for Mosley will be negligible and no real advantage at all. At the same time, the speed advantage that Mosley had in his fight with Margarito probably will be completely minimized by the faster Pacquiao, who throws is much faster than Margarito and probably a couple of shades faster than Mosley himself. Without a speed advantage and not much of a size factor working for him, Mosley might find himself an underdog once again.
Indeed, he won’t be able to depend on taking advantage of a slower opponent in beating them to the punch in a fight with Pacquiao, because Manny will likely be landing his shots faster and harder than Mosley. On the outside, Mosley probably won’t be able to land his jab nearly as much against Pacquiao than he did against Margarito on Saturday, because Pacquiao will be moving a lot of darting in close to land fast combinations and then get outside.
Mosley probably doesn’t have the tools to beat Pacquiao no matter which way you look at it. A win over Margarito proves nothing, other than that Antonio didn’t have the speed to deal with Mosley. Pacquiao, however, does.
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