By William Mackay: Though Shane Mosley (45-5, 38 KOs) has recently said that he’d like to fight another four to five years, I think his time is about to come up on Saturday when he faces WBA welterweight champion Antonio Margarito (37-5, 27 KOs) at the Staples Center, in Los Angeles, California. A beating at the hands of Margarito has a way of convincing a fighter about what he has left in the tank.
Mosley, no doubt, has had a fine career, winning titles as a lightweight, welterweight and light middleweight division but something tells me that Mosley will be seeing his last title shot on Saturday night. His offense, his size, his age and his ability to fight for prolonged periods of time will be his limiting factors against Margarito.
Mosley might have been a good fight for Margarito five years ago, maybe a little longer, but he’s barked up the wrong tree by facing him now. Mosley could have been a bit of trouble for him back then but even then, it would have been asking too much for Mosley to have beaten him years ago.
In his prime, Mosley was a similar fighter to Miguel Cotto, only with faster hands and foot speed. But he’d have been caught just the same and had the fight taken out of him much in the same way Mosley lost to Vernon Forrest and Winky Wright twice each.
Margarito would likely beat either of those guys if given the chance, which tells you what kind of fight this is going to be on Saturday. Mosley was forced to fight hard to get a win over Ricardo Mayorga in his last fight, battling in a life and death fight and somehow pulling out a 12th round TKO victory.
Mosley got the win but the fact that he had to struggle badly to defeat Mayorga, was a hint to Shane that it’s a good time for him to start thinking about retirement. A beat down from Margarito on Saturday will be another painful remainder for Mosley, telling him that it’s time that he consider moving on to another career.
If Mosley had a huge following like Oscar De La Hoya, I could understand him hanging around and cherry-picking fighters from the lower divisions like Manny Pacquiao or Yuriorkis Gamboa that he can would have a better chance at beating.
But, Mosley isn’t as highly sought after as De La Hoya, hence it probably isn’t worth the trouble of having to take all the unnecessary head trauma to fight on past the beating he’ll receive on Saturday. I wish Mosley had enough left to give Margarito a good fight because I want to see an entertaining fight, but he’ll be lucking if he can last half the fight against Antonio.
I think the only way he’ll make it that far is if he moves constantly, not letting Margarito set up his offense for any length of time. If he does try to fight with Margarito in war, like he did with De La Hoya and Forrest twice before, Mosley is going to get obliterated, chopped down and quickly taken out. At best, Mosley will probably be throwing 1/4th the amount of punches per round in comparison to Margarito, and that’s not a good thing.
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