Roach: Mosley could be finished by Alvarez on May 5th

By William Mackay: Freddie Roach sees 40-year-old Shane Mosley (46-7, 39 KO’s) in a tough situation in his fight against WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez (39-0-1, 29 KO’s) on May 5th. Roach thinks the young 21-year-old Alvarez could finish off Mosley, who has lost two out of his last three fights and hasn’t won a bout since 2009.

Roach said to Boxingtalk.com “Canelo is going to give it to him. This might be it for Shane. For the past four fights, he hasn’t looked good and I don’t expect anything different for this fight. It is what it is. We all get old.”

Roach, the trainer for WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., would like to see Canelo move up in weight to fight the 25-year-old Chavez Jr. with the winner than taking on WBC middleweight Diamond champion Sergio Martinez. The one thing getting in the way of a Chavez-Alvarez fight is the fact that both guys fight for different promotional companies. Alvarez fights for Golden Boy Promotions, whereas Chavez Jr. fights for Top Rank. Because of that, it’s unlikely that Chavez and Alvarez can have a fight put together between them.

Mosley has been looking really old in the last couple of years, and it’s difficult to see him all of a sudden looking good against Alvarez on May 5th. Most likely, Mosley will lose and lose badly by a lopsided 12 round decision. He’s good enough defensively to survive for 12 rounds if he fights without aggression and throws few punches. But if he actually tries to win the fight then he’ll get easily beaten.

Alvarez and Golden Boy Promotions are taking a slight risk in choosing Mosley to fight, because if he can left his punches go when he sees openings from Alvarez, this will be a one-sided fight because a prime Mosley is in another dimension compared to Alvarez. Let’s be real here. Alvarez will never be as good as Mosley was. We can see that now, because Alvarez doesn’t have the hand speed or the explosive power that a younger Mosley had when he was one of the top lightweights in the world. That was Mosley’s best weight class from 1993 to 1999.