By Dan Ambrose: 40-year-old Shane Mosley (46-7-1, 39 KO’s) appears be the sacrificial lamb being brought in for the young 21-year-old WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez (39-0-1, 29 KO’s) to rip apart on May 5th on HBO pay per view. Boxing fans will be paying $59.95 for the card, but most of them won’t be purchasing the card to see the Alvarez-Mosley fight.
Fans will be buying this card strictly to see the main event between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto. The Mosley-Alvarez fight is just the thrown in fight to have something else to show to soak up time before the main event. Unfortunately this fight doesn’t appear to be a good one on paper because of how completely shot Mosley has been looking since 2010.
It’s funny how Mosley went from looking good in January 2009 to looking 100 years-old the next year when he was beaten badly by Floyd Mayweather Jr, and then followed that up with a controversial gift draw against Sergio Mora. Mosley came back yet again after talking his way into a mismatch with Manny Pacquiao and was easily beaten by him as well, getting beaten by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision last year in May.
I don’t know how else to see Mosley in this fight other than a lamb being brought in to make Alvarez look better than he really is. What we haven’t seen since Alvarez won the WBC title last year against a fringe welterweight contender Matthew Hatton is Alvarez taking on the cream of the division in James Kirkland, Vanes Martirosyan and Erislandy Lara. Perhaps Alvarez could beat those guys? I wouldn’t know, but I do know that Alvarez’s promoters seem to be matching him soft, as if he’s still being treated like a prospect instead of a champion. That’s the bad part.
Instead of seeing worthwhile fights with Alvarez matched against someone in their prime with the ability to possibly beat him, we’re seeing Alvarez get put in with Hatton, Alfonso Gomez, Ryan Rhodes and Kermit Cintron. Now it’s Mosley’s turn. He fits in nicely with the beatable bunch that Alvarez has already fought in the past year.
Some boxing fans are of the opinion that Mosley will be too much for the 21-year-old Alvarez on May 5th, and that he’ll get beaten by the much more experienced Mosley. I’m not one of them. I see Mosley as someone that can’t pull the trigger anymore on his shots. He’s going to go out there and get blasted around the ring for 12 rounds or maybe even knocked out.
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