By Charles Jay

 

First of all, to give us some reference, let's go over the odds on the welterweight title fight between Miguel Angel Cotto and Shane Mosley, as they come from my friends over at BetUS.com:

 

MIGUEL ANGEL COTTO  -150

SHANE MOSLEY  +120

Over 9.5 rounds  -300

Under 9.5 rounds  +200

 

To get some take on this titanic matchup, I hooked up with some of my homies from Long Island. Here's what a couple of then had to say:

 

Bobby Cassidy Jr., Newsday -- "To me this is the biggest test of Cotto's career and I think he's ready to pass it. In Mosley, he'll be facing a better version of Zab Judah and we saw what Cotto did to Judah. Yes, Mosley is better than Judah, but Mosley is also older and I think that is a factor here. The young lion almost always overtakes the older lion. I also don't think Mosley will be able to resist the temptation to slug with Cotto and that will be his undoing. Cotto will wear him down with his strength and power. It will go the distance and Cotto will survive some rocky moments, but he will win a unanimous decision."

 

Randy Gordon, Siruis Satellite radio host and former New York boxing commissioner --  "In a year when boxing has enjoyed a resurgence and in a fall season which has been loaded with outstanding bouts, the Miguel Cotto-Sugar Shane Mosley bout just may turn into the best of them all.  Both of these men are top-of-the-league, world-class athletes.  I'm looking for this to become a Madison Square Garden Classic, right out of the pages of Joe Frazier-Muhammad Ali on March 8, 1971.  Both will throw hundreds of punches and both will landed a significant number.  In what I see as a sometimes brutal, two-sided fight, Mosley will have his hand raised in a close but unanimous decision.  Don't be surprised if this turns into the Fight of the Year."

 

Then there's my other New York guy, Johnny Bos, who could literally walk to this fight at the Garden: "At 147 (pounds) Cotto is going to prove to be too strong a fighter down the stretch. Five years ago Mosley would've stopped him, but right now Cotto is the younger, stronger fighter. The danger rounds for Cotto are rounds one through three, but once he gets by that he completely takes over."

 

Well put, and duly noted.

 

Now here's my take:

 

Look, I know there is a chance that Shane Mosley is too old to wage a 12-round war against a fighter who appears so fresh, so strong, so talented, and, in the opinion of some, an intrinsic part of the future of the boxing world. Mosley's time may have passed; those fights with Vargas were really designed as pure paydays - they weren't really avenues by which one advances in the general scheme of things - and maybe there isn't anything to be seen in those two wins that indicates Mosley is going to come into Madison Square Garden and roll over Miguel Angel Cotto.

 

I know that Cotto has a great left hook that is equally potent whether it is thrown to the body or to the head, and that Mosley is not exactly going to be circling the ring, a la Sugar Ray Leonard against Marvin Hagler. In other words, I know that on occasion, he will be there to be hit. And even though he has fought a lot of very good - even great - fighters, Mosley probably hasn't encountered someone who can throw with hands as heavy as this guy for a sustained period of time.

 

All this is a given except for one overriding factor:

 

I do not trust Cotto's chin in the least.

 

He reminds me of another Puerto Rican fighter who have pretty good form, a pretty good posture in the ring, could punch with authority, and who couldn't take a punch either. Of course the guy I'm talking about is Edwin Rosario. When Rosario fought, he looked like he was poised to take your head off. But when he got hit on the button, the lion turned into a lamb. Howard Davis, a tremendous boxer but in no way a big puncher, hurt him when he hit him squarely. And if Davis were a better puncher, he would have taken him right out of the fight. Mosley is a better puncher than Davis was, and he undoubtedly has more whack than DeMarcus Corley, bless his heart, who if he could punch just A LITTLE would have turned Cotto into an ex-champion.

 

Mosley is not the Sugar Shane we remember from those wins over Oscar De La Hoya (can I put an asterisk on one of those?), but he still has the kind of hand speed that will allow him to land punches the other guy doesn't see. And even though I never really considered Mosley the ultimate ring strategist, over the course of time fighters - especially the good ones - develop a sense of what they can and can not do, and they incorporate that into the game plan.

 

My guess is that Shane Mosley has developed an approach that is going to demonstrate a little more movement than perhaps he's used to, and certainly more than most of Cotto's opponents have ever showed. You have to remember that in the wake of losing De La Hoya and looking for someone to promote as the new De La Hoya, Top Rank has been very, very careful about matching Cotto to this point. That's a funny thing to say about a guy who has worn a championship belt for a while, but it's true. And in this day and age, it's altogether possible.

 

So it follows that even at age 36, Mosley is presenting Cotto with something in the way of opposition he has never seen before. Forget about Zab Judah, who was not nearly as accomplished a fighter. If Mosley came in with a plan that was all wrong, he would look the way Judah looked, but he won't.

We're operating on the principle here that if you have a glass jaw, it's not something you can hide from forever. Sooner or later, it's going to come back and haunt you. This is what Mosley has to exploit. When you can give your opponent some different angles and do it effectively you're going to have a better chance to hit him with the punch he can't react to. I am going to give Mosley's camp credit for knowing that already. If he can get to Cotto early and land something that immediately captures the champion's respect, it might take away some of Cotto's aggressiveness. Then, he will have to utilize his hand speed and some movement to create frustration, wear Cotto down, and end it in the late rounds. 

JAY'S PLAY: MOSLEY (+120) **

(Graded on a scale of 1-4 stars)