When the fight between Shane Mosley and Sergio Mora was announced, many might have thought that it was going to be an easy fight for Mosley. But as I expected, he had a difficult time against Mora because with the exception to the Mayweather fight, his other losses came against tall fighters, who had good jabs such as Winky Wright and Vernon Forrest.
In addition, Mosley is more suited for the welterweight division, where he enjoys the advantage in size and strength against most of his opponents. At the junior middleweight division, he sacrifices some of his speed and strength, which is risky especially with Mosley being in the latter years of his career. He also doesn’t throw enough stiff jabs to keep the bigger junior middleweights at bay.
In the fight against Mora, many thought that Mosley won handily and pointed to the Compubox stats as proof. But sometimes statistics do not always tell the whole story. While Lederman of HBO had Mosley winning handily, other analysts such as Doug Fischer had Mora winning almost all the rounds. It depends on what aspects of the fight game an individual think is more important.
If you think that a fighter who lands the most punches should win then Mosley definitely did his job. However, if you think the person who dictated the tempo of the fight and landed the most effective punches should win, then Mora probably should have won. The style of the fight certainly played into Mora's strength.
In the fight, Mora was able to control Mosley by using stiff jabs and holding his own in clinches. It was also ironic that the same strategy Mosley used against Margarito was used successfully against him. Mora used stiff jabs along with occasional combinations and clinched Mosley during close quarters. Mora also used great body and head movement to avoid Mosley’s punches, which frustrated the latter.
But Mosley’s biggest problem was probably himself. As a smaller man, he needed to utilize stiff jabs to get closer to Mora and let his hands go without forgetting to concentrate on the body, which is important when fighting a fighter who is expected to use the whole ring throughout the fight.
He did that in the last few of rounds, but by then it was too late. Instead, for most of the fight Mosley fell to his old bad habit of throwing pawing jabs and following his opponent around instead of cutting off the ring.
As result, he was lucky to escape with a draw and probably took himself out of the Pacquiao running with a disappointing performance. Shane Mosley best move is probably to retire. He can still beat a number of solid fighters, but it might not be worth it to stay in the fight game, if he can no longer beat the elites of the division.
At this stage, some will be hard pressed to put him as a favorite against fighters such as Sergei Dzinziruk, Kermit Cintron, Vanes Martirosyan, Alfredo Angulo and Sergio Martinez. Besides he is one of the most accomplished fighter of his generation and has nothing else to prove.
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