What’s Next For Mosley?

By Boxing News - 01/27/2009 - Comments

shane433355By Manuel Perez: New WBA welterweight champion Shane Mosley (46-5, 39 KOs) must feel like a little kid in a big candy store since winning the title from Antonio Margarito with an upset 9th round TKO on Saturday night at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. With the decks stacked against him, the small 5’9″ Mosley pulled off the upset by using his natural advantage in hand speed along with a strategy which included a lot of clinching to defeat Margarito.

With the victory, Mosley is now once again considered to be one of the best, if the best, welterweights on the planet. There’s been speculation that he would go after retired Floyd Mayweather Jr. and try to get him to come back for a fight. That would be an exciting fight and one that most fans would want to see. Not only is Mayweather an option on the table, but there’s also the possibility of fighting Manny Pacquiao, Ricky Hatton, Joshua Clottey, Andre Berto or fight a rematch with Margarito.

Either way, Mosley is going to fight someone good and get well paid for doing it, much better than he would have otherwise before winning the title against Margarito. I believe that Margarito wouldn’t be the best candidate right now because there would be little suspense in fighting him now, because the fight wasn’t close. Below, I’ve included some names and my thoughts on Mosley fighting them.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. – At 32, would be possibly the best option for Mosley. Floyd’s still marketable, popular and probably has most of his skills intact. A fight with him would naturally sell really well with boxing fans and bring in huge PPV numbers. The problem here is that Mayweather seems to have grown comfortable with not fighting now that he’s immensely rich and might not feel that Mosley is enough to motivate him for a fight. It’s too bad, because the fight would be fun while it lasted. With his time off from boxing, I think Mayweather would lose this fight. Mosley would come up with a strategy with his new trainer Nasim Richardson and end up beating Mayweather by decision.

Ricky Hatton – I think Ricky probably wouldn’t want to take this fight, even if Mosley agreed to come in at 140. It would be a great fight but I think Hatton’s people would warn him about being too small for Mosley, and would persuade him not to take the fight. In truth, Hatton’s just a couple inches shorter than the 5’9” Mosley and pretty much the same size. The difference here is that Mosley is so much quicker and skilled, and would give Hatton too many problems to be worth the risk. I see Mosley easily knocking Hatton out by the 4th round. This would be easy for Mosley. It’s too bad Hatton would probably never take it, even if huge money was waived in front of him.

Manny Pacquiao – This fight would be almost identical to the Hatton fight, only that Pacquaio would be much tougher and would probably make it to the 10th or 11th before being knocked out by Mosley. Pacquiao, as good as he is, doesn’t have the size to beat a fighter as powerful as Mosley. Again, Mosley isn’t much bigger than him at 5’9” compared to 5’6”, but Mosley is used to fighting much stronger fighters than him and wouldn’t be bothered by his pesky shots.

Joshua Clottey – The current IBF welterweight champion, Clottey would be a good fight for Mosley if he’s interested in unifying the titles. Personally, I think the fans could care less about title unification matches and are more interested in seeing good fighters matched against each other. Clottey certainly belongs in the category of being a good fighter, but unfortunately, he’s not a popular one and the public would probably have little interest in seeing this fight. I know I could care less about seeing this fight. I have no doubts that Mosley would beat him and that bores me even more. Clottey has terrible stamina and would tire and lose by a decision. Why bother?



Comments are closed.