By William Mackay: “Sugar” Shane Mosley fought would many people could consider to be the best fight of his long 16-year career in battering World Boxing Association welterweight champion Antonio Margarito and stopping him in the 9th round. Mosley’s hands were like lightning proving to be much too fast for the ponderous Margarito to handle in the fight. The fight might as well have been stopped in the 1st round, because Mosley was much too good for Margarito and superior in almost every facet of his game.
The fight would last eight more rounds and produce two knockdowns before it was mercifully stopped by referee Raul Caiz at 0:43 of the 9th. In the 9th round alone, Mosley landed 21 punches to 0 from Margarito, showing Shane’s complete domination of the Mexican fighter.
In beating Margarito, I’ve isolated the factors to a few main reasons – Speed, a quality jab, combinations and clinches. Each factor alone, probably was more than enough to beat Margarito but in being brought together in one packages, it gave Margarito absolutely no chance of winning the fight.
Jab – Mosley steadily picked off Margarito all fight long as he would try to get inside and set up shop in front of Shane. In keeping his jab constantly pumping out two and three jabs at a time, Mosley kept Margarito on the outside where he was forced to try and trade shots at a distance. And while Margarito is the taller fighter at 5’11” compared to the 5’9” for Mosley, Margarito is only average fighter on the outside.
Speed – Margarito didn’t have the hand speed to get his slower shots in, making it a problem for him when he wanted to try and load up with a shot. Through much of the fight, when he would come looking for Mosley, he’d get hit with jabs and powerful right hands as he would try to land his slow, looping shots. Margarito may have shown to have a good chin in the past against fighters like Kermit Cintron and Miguel Cotto, but he was very uncomfortable with getting hit with the speedy shots from Mosley, and didn’t try as hard as he usually does to land his shots.
Clinches – Not much has been said about the expert clinching that Mosley did in the fight, but it clearly had a factor in shutting down the offense of Margarito. When Margarito would get past Mosley’s jabs and right hands, close enough to land his own big bombs, Mosley would often grab him and tie him up in a clinch. This happened round after round, preventing Margarito from getting more than one or two shots in at a time. It was the old tried and true punch and grab technique and Mosley played it out perfectly.
To be sure, it was ugly to watch because it limited the two-way action in the fight but if the referee was going to let Mosley get away with it, who can blame him for continuing to do so. I counted an average of 7 to 10 clinches initiated by Mosley in every round of the fight. That’s a lot and it had to have had an effect on Margarito.
Combinations – When Mosley did throw punches, he often threw two and three at a time, and would drive Margarito backwards and hit him with big shots. By putting his shots together, Mosley was able to further shut down Margarito’s offense and put him on the defensive. Mosley did this throughout the fight and made Margarito pay for any real estate that he tried to take.