By Dan Ambrose: 40-year-old Shane Mosley has been hanging on the last few years as his career has gone quickly down the tubes in a major way. He’s not one a fight since January 2009, and hast lost two out of his last three bouts during that time with one of the fights ending up a controversial 12 round draw against Sergio Mora.
On Saturday night, Mosley will be fighting for another world title against WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez, and things don’t look too good for Mosley in this fight. Alvarez is bigger, stronger and has a much better work rate compared to the nearly 41-year-old Mosley. I think that it’s going to be very, very hard for Mosley to make it to the final round. Forget about him winning the fight, I don’t see that as being humanly possible at this advanced stage in Mosley’s career.
I don’t think Mosley will continue fighting if he gets beaten especially bad by Alvarez on Saturday. It’s one thing getting beaten up by Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao, but a whole different thing altogether when you get beaten up by a 21-year-old kid that’s the same age as Mosley’s son. I don’t think Mosley will take it too well if he gets stomped in this fight, and may opt to retire rather than being batted around by other young fighters at 147 or 154.
Mosley has to keep moving if he wants to win this fight. He can’t risk trying to stand and trade with Alvarez, because he doesn’t have the power or the strength to stand up to Alvarez and fire back. Mosley was beaten in his last fight against Manny Pacquiao last year in May in a fight that should have never been made in the first place because of how one-sided it was.
For Mosley to win this fight, he’ll literally have to find the fountain of youth to where he can go back in time 10+ years when he was able to fight hard for three minutes of every round instead of just a fraction of that.
Alvarez will be looking to put constant pressure on Mosley in order to get him out of there quickly. He knows what he’s got in the aging Mosley and will be looking to take his head off with some well placed punches.
I can’t see Alvarez looking to go all out to try and score a knockout. So if Mosley fights a defensive fight, Alvarez will likely allow Mosley to survive until the final bell rather than looking to destroy him for kicks.
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