(Photo credit: Hoganphotos/Golden Boy Promotions) By Eric Thomas: Golden Boy Promotions president Oscar De La Hoya sees WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez doing a better job on 40-year-old Shane Mosley than mega stars Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao did in beating him recently.
De La Hoya said “I would expect him [Alvarez] to look better than Pacquiao and Mayweather did against Mosley because that’s the type of talent that Canelo has.”
Alvarez is going to have to put in an extra special performance if he’s going to outdo Mayweather and Pacquiao in their fights against Mosley, because both of them looked very good. Pacquiao dominated Mosley for 12 rounds in an easy decision win. For his part, Mayweather overcome getting shock up by Mosley in the 2nd round, but then came on to dominate him for the last 10 rounds of the fight to win an easy 12 round decision.
Alvarez is a slow and deliberate fighter that seems to lack the killer instinct. He’ll have to fight incredibly hard to improve on the performances by Mayweather and Cotto. There’s little doubt that Alvarez will beat Mosley on May 5th, but what’s doubtful is Alvarez being able to impress like Mayweather and Pacquiao did. Alvarez doesn’t have the same experience as those two fighters and nor does he have his hand speed. He’s got to be able to fight his fight and not get caught up with trying to impress too much by trying to outdo Mayweather and Pacquiao.
Mosley appears to be shot. However, he doesn’t see it this way and feels he’s got more than enough talent to possibly beat Alvarez. Mosley will have to fight a lot harder than he’s fought in his last few fights if he wants to get the win. If he can match his fight performance that he put in with his Antonio Margarito bout in 2009, he’ll do okay. But at this point it’s unclear whether Mosley can fight more than two or three rounds at the most without tiring out and going into a long period where he doesn’t throw punches.
With a lot of things expected from Alvarez in this fight, he’s likely to disappoint in a big way. When you get matched up with a guy that’s considered to be shot to pieces like Mosley, there’s too much of a chance for things to go wrong. Alvarez isn’t a great fighter to begin with and Mosley knows a lot of tricks. He could make Alvarez look really bad just by fighting a hit and run survival oriented game plan.
Comments are closed.