By Dan Ambrose: 41-year-old Shane Mosley (46-8-1, 39 KO’s) got a really lucky break when Ricky Hatton was beaten by former WBA welterweight champion Vyacheslav Senchenko last November in Hatton’s ill-fated comeback in Manchester, England.
If Hatton had won that fight he was going to get a title shot against WBA welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi (32-4, 7 KO’s) this year. Mosley saw the Hatton-Senchenko fight, as soon as he saw that Hatton was beaten, he got the idea of making a play for the Malignaggi fight by asking Golden Boy Promotions if they would be interested in having him fight Malignaggi.
Golden Boy agreed and now Mosley will be facing Malignaggi on April 27th at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Mosley said in an interview with Radio Raheem “I kind of went after the fight [with Malignaggi]. I asked for it. I guess it made financial sense to Golden Boy. It’s not going to be a boring fight; it’s going to be a tough fight. It’s not for the money. I make more money on interest [bank account] than I’m making for this fight. When I win the belt, everyone’s going to come to me and want to fight. I love that. When they come to me, I’m going to be knocking them down.”
I think everything looks better in retrospect. Mosley seems to have lost tract of the fact that he hasn’t won a fight in four years since January 2009, and he’s fought four times during those four years.
Mosley has lost to Floyd Mayweather Jr, Manny Pacquiao and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Mosley also has a controversial 12 round draw with Sergio Mora in September 2010, in a fight that many boxing fans felt Mosley should have lost. I had Mosley losing that fight by four rounds.
Mosley has a chance to beat Malignaggi, but that’s only because Malignaggi looks really vulnerable right now. He fought well earlier last year in beating Senchenko, but in his last fight against Pablo Cesar Cano last October, Malignaggi looked terrible in winning a controversial 12 round split decision in Brooklyn, New York.
Some boxing fans saw that as a hometown decision for Malignaggi. Whatever the case, it wasn’t a good performance from him and if he fights like that against Mosley, he may just lose.
Mosley has been totally dominated in his last two fights against Pacquiao and Canelo. He just didn’t seem to have the ability to pull the trigger on his shots even when there were countless openings for him to throw his punches. His work rate was low, his speed wasn’t there and neither was his power. Mosley will have to be able to fight a lot better if he wants to beat Malignaggi.
If Mosley does beat Malignaggi, I don’t think he’s going to get the kinds of fights that he might be hoping for. Mosley will likely get guys like Andre Berto, Marcos Maidana, Diego Chavez, Jessie Vargas and Randall Bailey showing interest in fighting him, but those aren’t the huge names that will make for a big fight. Mosley would get a decent payday simply by being the new WBA champion, and I would expect Showtime or HBO to televise his fight, but I think he’d lose to most if not all of those fighters at this stage in his career.
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