By Allan Fox: On May 5th, WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez (39-0-1, 29 KO’s) will be facing the old lion 40-year-old Shane Mosley (46-7-1, 39 KO’s) in a title bout at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
This fight is effectively the end of the line for the soon to be 41-year-old Mosley, as he hasn’t won a fight in over three years. It was touching that the World Boxing Council decided to give Mosley a #4 ranking for this fight after having him not even ranked in the 15 like the other sanctioning bodies. But it doesn’t matter that Mosley was given a high ranking based on three win-less years, he’s still going to get pounded on Saturday by the 21-year-old Alvarez and there’s not much that change that.
The WBC can give Mosley a #1 ranking, but they’re just going to look even sillier than they already are with the #4 ranking they gave him. Mosley doesn’t stand a chance. He’s too old, too weak and too limited in the condition department. At best, Mosley will be able to fight hard for maybe two rounds without gassing out.
Once he goes past the 2nd, Mosley will likely be badly fatigued and just looking for ways to survive until the final bell. It’s unfortunate because he’s got that inflated ranking the WBC just gave him, and this is after all the co-main event on an expensive $59.95 pay-per-view card on HBO.
You’d like to think that a fighter with a high ranking like that on an expensive fight card like this one would be capable of fighting hard beyond the 2nd round, but that’s not going to be the case. Mosley will fight like he did against Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao recently, both of which beat him soundly, and will go into the survival mode automatically after the 2nd round.
Alvarez can pick and choose how he wants to beat Mosley. He can either look to blast him apart by slugging or he can box circles around him for an easy 12 round decision. It doesn’t matter which one he picks, Alvarez will find equal success with both. Mosley is too far past it to put up much of a fight, and he doesn’t have the size to compete with a rugged, younger fighter like Alvarez.
Mosley did beat Ricardo Mayorga at 154 by a 12th round knockout, but that was four years ago, and Mayorga was someone that has ate his way out of the 147 pound division. He wasn’t a young, natural 154 pounder like Alvarez. And besides that, it was four years ago and Mosley looked awful in that fight against a pretty much shot Mayorga. Now four years later, Mosley has really gone downhill dramatically.
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