By Michael Lieberman: Former WBC junior middleweight champion Sergio Mora (22-1-2, 6 KO’s) needs to start getting a lot more busier in the future if he wants to fight for another title before he hits 50s. Mora, despite having loads of talent, has done largely nothing since losing his WBC title to Vernon Forrest in a rematch two years ago in September 2008.

Mora, 30, has fought only twice since then. On February 4th, Mora will be taking on former contestant from The Contender reality television series Bryan Vera (17-5, 11 KO’s) in a scheduled 10 round bout at the Convention Center, in Fort Worth, Texas. This would have been a great fight for Mora to take immediately after the Forrest loss, but not two years later.

Mora should have already been fighting for a title by now and it’s disappointing that he has to settle for this. In his last fight, Mora was pretty much given the shaft in a 12 round draw with Shane Mosley in September 2010. Mora appeared to beat Mosley by at least four rounds but walked away with only a draw for his efforts. That kind of thing is to be expected when taking on a fighter as popular as Mosley, so it’s not surprising that Mora didn’t get the win.

However, Mora really needs to start pushing himself for more fights because he can’t keep fighting once per year if he wants to get a title shot anytime soon. Mora was hoping to get a shot against WBC/WBO Kelly Pavlik in 2009, but Pavlik was unable to make it into the ring due to a nagging staph infection. That caused Mora to lose a lot of time while waiting for Pavlik’s hand to heal.

Mora should handle Vera without too many problems. Vera can punch hard with his right hand, but he’s slow, has problems moving and doesn’t have very good boxing skills. This will be an easy win for Mora. But from here on out, Mora needs to go after some of the top junior middleweights like Saul Alvarez, Alfredo Angulo, Antonio Margarito and Kermit Cintron so that he can get pushed up the rankings faster.