By Dan Ambrose: 39-year-old Shane Mosley (46-6, 30 KO’s) will be fighting Sergio Mora (22-1-1, 6 KO’s) on Saturday night at the Staples Center, in Los Angeles, California. Mosley lost his last fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. on May 1st in a one-sided beating to the faster and younger Mayweather.

Mosley, however, is blaming the loss on some neck pain that he was suffering previous to the bout. Whatever the case, Mosley won’t have any more excuses that boxing fans will buy if he gets beaten by Mora on Saturday night. Mosley may have to face up to the sad reality that he’s a fighter that has seen his best day and who no longer can beat the top guys in the division.

Mosley is favored to beat Mora by a 3-1 margin, and it’s going to be interesting if he can live up to that on Saturday night. Mora is a fast fighter that specializes in hitting without being hit. He’s perhaps the worst opponent you could pick for a fighter that’s losing his legs like Mosley appeared to be in his fight with Mayweather.

Mora will test Mosley and make him work harder than he wants to work. Mosley is still convinced that he can fight Manny Pacquiao and get rematches with Miguel Cotto and Mayweather. That would be nice but it would take an impressive win by Mosley against Mora, as well as some cooperation from Mayweather and Pacquiao.

Mayweather doesn’t seem to be interested in fighting right now, and when he does get around to fighting again next year, it’s not likely going to be Mosley that he wants to fight. As for Pacquiao and Cotto, their Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is likely going to put Cotto and Pacquiao back in with each other in a rematch.

And after that, who knows. It probably won’t be Mosley that gets the call for either of them. In the meantime, Mosley keeps getting older and he’s running out of time. He looked great in beating Antonio Margarito a year ago in January 2009, but that was a long time ago and Mosley has fought only once since then against Mayweather. Mosley looked shot against Mayweather. It could be that Mosley’s ambitions are more than what his aging body can accomplish at this late stage in his career. It would be great if he were to turn around and beat Mora impressively and then get an immediate fight with Cotto or Pacquiao.

But the odds are stacked against all of that happening. Mosley may beat Mora, he’s probably going to struggle against him and not look very impressive. It’s hard to look good against Mora and it takes a fighter that has power, speed and movement. I don’t know if Mosley has enough left in the tank to pull this off.