(Photo: Alma Montiel) By Dan Ambrose: 40-year-old Shane Mosley (46-7-1, 39 KO’s) heads into his May 5th bout against the younger WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez (39-0-1, 29 KO’s) with a huge experience advantage in their co-headline pay-per-view bout on HBO on the undercard of the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Miguel Cotto fight at the MGM Grand, Las Vegas, Nevada.
Mosley has been fighting as a pro almost as long as the 21-year-old Alvarez has been alive and has faced so much better opposition than him. The experience differences between the two fighters is pretty dramatic. While Alvarez has been carefully matched against guys like Lovemore Ndou, Matthew Hatton, Kermit Cintron, Alfonso Gomez, Ryan Rhodes, Jose Miguel Cotto and Carlos Baldomir, Mosley has had important fights against fighters like Oscar De La Hoya, Manny Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Fernando Vargas, Luis Collazo, Vernon Forest, Ronald “Winky” Wright, Sergio Mora, Jesse James Leija, Raul Marquez, John John Molina, Philip Holiday, Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito.
There’s no comparison between the two fighter when looking at the experience factor between them. However, Mosley is 40, and those fights have obviously taken a little something out of him over the years. Alvarez is fresher at 21 and is also the naturally bigger and stronger fighter of the two. Alvarez started his career out at 147, whereas Mosley started his career at 135. Mosley, 5’9″, is the same height as Alvarez but he doesn’t have the same size frame and will be giving away a lot of strength in this fight. Mosley is still faster than Alvarez even in his advanced age, but the power difference and youth factor could be too much for Mosley.
Mosley has to fight Alvarez like he did Margarito in 2009 by coming inside and throwing fast combinations before grabbing him in a clinch. Mosley has to get off first and make sure he doesn’t let Alvarez lead or be the aggressor.
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