By William Mackay: Through a long 16 year professional boxing career, Shane Mosley has been fortunate enough not to have been knocked out. He’ll be incredibly lucky if that streak can somehow continue on Saturday night against WBA welterweight champion Antonio Margarito. The problem for Mosley is that he plans on going toe to toe with Margarito, a fighter with the ability to throw well over 100 puncher per round for an entire fight.
Most of the time, his opponents aren’t able to take more than six to eight rounds of continue pressure from Margarito without getting taken out. Mosley, 37, will have to bring something special if he expects to be one of the few that can last a full 12 rounds with Margarito. Even if Mosley gets through 12, he then has to find a way to neutralize Margarito’s high punch output.
How he plans on doing that is a mystery to us all, because based on Mosley’s pre-fight comments leading up to tomorrow’s fight, he plans on trying to match Margarito punch for punch, throwing to the body when he throws to the body and throwing to the head when he throws to the head.
As far as I’m concerned, I think Mosley’s a little crazy if he’s serious about fighting like Margarito this way. Nothing in Mosley’s recent past fights would show that he’s physically capable of throwing 100 punches per round, but who knows?
Maybe Mosley has been saving himself for all these years for just the type of opponent like Margarito that he could show off his high octane offense. Of course, if Mosley is wrong about his ability to match Margarito punch for punch, then there’s a high chance that Mosley will get beaten to a pulp and knocked out well before the 12th round.
Mosley looked good in beating Luis Collazo and in a losing effort against Miguel Cotto in 2007, but in both fights, Mosley fought at a much slower pace, landing occasional big shots and flurries here and there. In other words, he fought the way he always has fought for most of his career and didn’t throw more than 40-60 punches per round.
That’s probably not going to get the job done against Margarito, I’m afraid. Unless Mosley has somehow gained super human strength since his last fight, he’s going to have a difficult time trying to dent the chin of Margarito.
A knockout win is probably Mosley’s only chance at beating Margarito, because Shane won’t be able to throw enough punches to beat out a decision win against a fighter like Margarito. Paul Williams, the last fighter to beat Margarito, was able to defeat him by a decision, but he did it by throwing over a 100 punches per round and even then, he barely beat him.
Mosley, 37, has seen his best days five to nine years ago and probably doesn’t have enough left to beat Margarito at his own game. Using movement is an option for Mosley, but it’s questionable that he could move long enough and well enough to keep Margarito from getting to him and taking him out.
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