Manny Pacquiao vs. Shane Mosley Breakdown and Prediction

It amazes me that so many people are picking Mosley, or thinking he has a chance here. I understand the reasons and I don’t think anyone’s “crazy” for picking him, but it surprises me that so many find that logic convincing. A few points:

- Technically, this is an excellent fight for Pacquiao. He has much better foot movement and a great extra set of eyes in Freddy Roach, who he has the kind of special bond with which allows him to take maximum advantage of instructions from. Look for Pacquiao to do subtle things tonight: throw 2 or 3 punch combinations then move off at angles (probably circling right away from the power and finishing with a right hook) which handcuff Mosley and leave him unable to get his right hand off; and to step back at times to draw Mosley forward, exposing Mosley’s late-career tendency to only throw with his feet fully planted. Pacquiao will find it very easy to walk Mosley into shots all night if he wants to.

Bear in mind as well, at this stage of the game all Pacquiao and Roach have to game plan for really is the one big right hand. Shane doesn’t throw a hook much, isn’t a consistent body puncher, and doesn’t really use the uppercut (always a vulnerability for Pac). Mosley has no plan B here really; he’s going to lay back and try to cash a lottery ticket punch, against a fighter that appears to be less likely to work against than anyone in boxing except maybe Bernard Hopkins.Throw in how leg-locked Shane looked in his last two outings and the fact that Pacquiao hasn’t really been a straight line on-rails fighter for years, and it’s easy to see Pacquaio hitting and turning Mosley round after round, gone before the response comes.

- Physically, Mosley has reached the stage of his career where all he has left is old-man gifts. He’s got a great chin, and still some power, and very little else. That is a combination which gets more guys hurt than it gets title belts. Mosley had a shallow gas tank against Floyd Mayweather and mentally broke in that fight, doing a lot of silent bargain touch-gloves malarkey in the later rounds. Against Sergio Mora he had trouble tracking down a guy who presented nearly no threat, and trouble getting punches off when he did track him down. Mosley’s reaction time is not nearly what it used to be, his head movement is diminishing, and he seems more and more content to rely on his chin to take shots so he get some off in response. That is not going to work against a guy who is probably the best offensive boxer in the world and who throws in powerful combinations.

Note as well that Mosley’s power, probably his best remaining offensive quality, can be overrated. In recent years he’s KO’d Antonio Margarito and Ricardo Mayorga both on accumulations of blows, Fernando Vargas when Vargas was a shell of a husk of a memory, and before that his last KO was Adrian Stone in 2001. Mosley has good power, and when he could get shots off consistently he could break guys down if they were hittable enough. But he was rarely if ever a 1-pop artist and in his last two fights he’s looked like he can see the openings but not hit them. Usually when a guy hits that point at age 39, he doesn’t come back from it (bar the occasional Hopkins/Couture freak instance).

With the caveats that anything can happen in a fight and puncher’s chance is a real thing etc. I think this is the kind of fight that’s a lot more likely to be uncomfortably brutal to watch than it is to be competitive.