By Jason Kim: Although some people might think that he’s a little biased because he has something to gain in the future, trainer Freddie Roach is picking Floyd Mayweather Jr. to beat Shane Mosley tomorrow night at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. In a press release sent out earlier today, Roach said “Shane’s my friend and I hope he wins, but has trouble with speed and movement, and likes guys to come to him so it’s going to be difficult.” Roach trains Manny Pacquiao, whom he is hoping will fight Mayweather in the future in a mega fight. Mayweather has to beat Mosley for that to happen obviously.

But the things that Roach has pointed out about Mosley are dead on correct, and it’s hard to argue with that. Mosley has always done well against fighters that either stood directly in front of him, like Oscar De La Hoya, or attacked him like Antonio Margarito. If you do either of those things in a fight against Mosley, it’s playing into his hands. In the fights that Mosley has had problems with, in defeats to Winky Wright and Vernon Forrest, he had to deal with a little bit of movement and had problems dealing with the jabs from the two fighters.

In both cases, Mosley was the smaller fighter compared to Forrest and Wright. I disagree with Mosley having problems with fighters with good hand speed. I’ve never seen Mosley have problems against fast fighters, but then again, he’s not really faced too many guys that were exceptionally quick, aside from Oscar De La Hoya. But Mosley didn’t really have a lot of problems with Oscar. He was able to get inside of De La Hoya in both fights and land better shots on the inside. And in the latter part of both fights, Mosley simply wore De La Hoya down and took the championship rounds.

So I don’t agree with the assessment from Roach that Mosley has problems with speed. He’s only faced on fighter with speed in his entire career and that’s De La Hoya and he dealt with him twice quite effectively. But the movement could be a problem for Mosley. Forrest circled the ring a little bit, but I think Mosley had more problems with Forrest’s looping hook, long arms and height advantage than he did with his movement. Forrest, 6’0”, had a three inch height advantage over Mosley and seemed to be a big factor in their two fights. On Saturday night, the 5’9” Mosley will have a one inch height advantage over the 5’8” Mayweather, so height won’t be an issue in this fight.