By Chris Williams: World Boxing Association welterweight champion Shane Mosley would prefer to win by a knockout over unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. and thinks he can take him out if he gets hurt when they go at it in their May 1st mega fight at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. In an article at RingTV.com, Mosley says “I’d love to win by knockout [against Mayweather], so if I can catch him with a good shot and he wobbles, we’ll see a knockout, but if that doesn’t happen, I’ll have to do whatever it takes to beat Floyd round by round.”
As far as I can tell, Mayweather has never been badly hurt by one of his opponents before in his 14-year career. So if Mosley does hit him with something big and hurt him, it would be a first for Mayweather. However, it’s not going to be an easy for Mosley to land something big enough to get Mayweather hurt, because Floyd doesn’t typically stand directly in front of his opponents.
Mayweather tends to move latterly for much of his fights and when he does stop, he covers up well to the head. He can be hit with single shots if the punch is thrown fast enough. In his fight with lightweight Juan Manuel Marquez last September, Marquez was able to land a huge right hand in 2nd round that caught Mayweather flush to the head.
If a fighter as slow as Marquez is able to find a small degree of success landing an occasional shot against Mayweather, then there’s a better than average chance that Mosley, a very fast puncher, will be able to land his shots as well and maybe hurt Mayweather in the process. The one factor in Mosley’s favor in this fight is that Mayweather has habit of retreating to the ropes and covering up from time to time.
Mayweather gets away with doing this with his ability to roll with the punches and make himself small by ducking and standing sideways to his opponents. He seems to be able to move just enough to make most shots either miss or glance of his head and gloves. However, Mosley does really well against opponents that try to cover up on the ropes.
In his last fight against Antonio Margarito last year in January, Mosley blasted away at Margarito when he tried to fight off the ropes. Mosley landed well against Margarito, and was able to drop him and take him out in the 9th round. Mayweather might want to make sure he stays clear of the ropes at all time, because the last thing he needs is to get trapped on the ropes and take punishment.
But if Mayweather does get hurt by Mosley, he could find himself in big trouble. Mosley has short arms, throws fast combinations and is very difficult to tie up in a clinch. Mayweather would have serious problems trying to get his arms around Mosley if he gets hurt by one of his shots. Mosley would be teeing off on Mayweather with fast combinations, making it extremely difficult for Mayweather to wrap his arms around Mosley to get him to stop punching.
As it is, this is going to be a hard enough fight for Mayweather because of Mosley’s size advantage in the fight. As we saw recently in the press conference scuffle between Mayweather and Mosley, Floyd is the smaller fighter and won’t be able to count on his size and reach to be able to help him in this fight. Mayweather has been bigger than all but one of his opponents in the past six years.
Maybe that’s by accident or planned. But whatever the case, Mayweather won’t be the bigger fighter on May 1st, and he’s not going to be able to pick Mosley off from the outside like he’s done recently against his shorter opponents.
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