Margarito-Mosley: Is Shane Ready For A War?

By Boxing News - 01/14/2009 - Comments

margo54By Dave Lahr: With age quickly creeping in on him, the 37-year-old Shane Mosley (45-5, 38 KOs) will be taking on his best opponent in years, perhaps in his entire career when he faces World Boxing Association welterweight champion Antonio Margarito (37-5, 27 KOs) on January 24th at the Staples Center, in Los Angeles, California. Coming off one of the worst performances in his career in his last fight, a 12th round TKO victory over Ricardo Mayorga in September, Mosley’s chosen a terrible time to fight someone as good as Margarito.

While Mosley did end up stopping Mayorga with one second to go in the 12th round, he fought like an old man, throwing few punches, unable to pull the trigger and getting hit often by Mayorga. Like many other sports writers, I had Mayorga winning the fight and if not for the knockout victory, I would have had Mayorga winning the bout. Two of the judges saw it differently, scoring the fight to the more popular Mosley, a fighter that works for Golden Boy Promotions.

Whatever the case, he looked like someone not close to being ready for a fight with a fighter as talented as Margarito and unless some minor miracle happens, like Mosley’s age suddenly turning backwards and making him younger, I see him getting totally wiped out by Margarito in this fight.

Margarito is coming off the best win of his career, an 11th round stoppage of Miguel Cotto in July 2008. Cotto tried running from Margarito all fight long and did a decent job of it until running out of gas in the 10th and getting knocked out in the 11th.

It’s pretty obvious that Mosley won’t try to stand and trade with Margarito because he’s got to know that he can’t match Margarito’s incredibly high punch output, which often averages over 100 punches per round. I expect that Mosley will try to fight in a limited version of Cotto’s hit and move style, using a lot of lateral movement, clinches and fast combinations to try and foil Margarito from getting his shots in.

I can see Mosley giving Margarito some problems for a time, because he’s a lot faster than him in terms of hand speed. However, Margarito, the bigger fighter, will be able to take Mosley’s shots in order to get his punches in, so unless Mosley clinches continuously, he’s going to get hit an awful lot in this one.

Even if he does clinch, Margarito will get in a lot of shots on the inside with uppercuts and hooks. There’ll be daylight between them at some point and you can expect that space to be filled with many more punches from Margarito than the age-depleted Mosley.

I think Mosley can land a fair of punches for awhile but by the time the fight reaches the 6th and 7th rounds, he will have been hit so much that his corner will probably be forced to step in for him and throw in the towel to prevent Mosley from having his head taken off like Cotto.



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