PAULUS MOSES vs TAKEHIRO SHIMADA

After travelling to Japan to win the WBA lightweight title, Paulus Moses will have home advantage in Namibia in southwest Africa on Saturday when he defends the championship for the first time.

Moses won a unanimous but hard-fought decision over the heavy-handed Yusuke Kobori in January to become only Namibia’s second world champ, the first being junior middleweight Harry Simon. On Saturday he meets the tough Japanese veteran Takehiro Shimada, whose only loss in almost nine years was against the powerful Edwin Valero in a WBA 130-pound title bout 13 months ago. It was the only time that Shimada has been stopped in a 12-year career.

Shimada boxed well in the early rounds, but Valero was too strong and hit much too hard for him. Shimada was suffering from a cut over the left eye, while the eye was starting to swell shut, and after the game Japanese fighter got dropped in the seventh the referee decided that enough was enough.

It wouldn’t have been a surprise had Shimada retired after that fight, but instead he took a break from boxing and came back in March with an impressive performance in Tokyo when he knocked out Ameth Diaz in four rounds: the Panamanian had been the full 12 rounds with Joan Guzman in his last fight.

Shimada is known for his durability, and he is a a good puncher whose last eight wins were by stoppage. An overmatched Thai boxer named Petchthongkan was taken out of the ring on a stretcher after Shimada flattened him with a big right hand in November 2007.

Yet while Shimada deserves to be respected, he finds himself in a tough position on Saturday, fighting outside of Japan for the first time and going up against a younger, taller, unbeaten, talented champion who will be eager to impress in his nation’s biggest-ever boxing event.

Moses proved to be an excellent boxer-puncher when he took the title from Kobori in January. I thought that Moses got rocked several times, but he always came back punching and I was impressed by his hand speed, left jab and combinations. Kobori withstood the sort of punishment that might have halted a lot of lightweights.

I believe that Moses is simply on a higher level than Shimada — a faster, sharper, superior all-around fighter. Moses isn’t known as a particularly hard hitter, but he had stopped his last five opponents before meeting Kobori — this included becoming the first to stop Andrei Kudriavstev, one of Europe’s leading lightweights, on his opponent’s home ground in Ukraine.

Shimada can be dangerous, so Moses might be a bit wary in the early stages, but I believe that the longer the fight goes, the more one-sided it will become.

Moses is the sort of boxer who can break down an opponent with an accumulation of sharp, accurate punches. Shimada has an excellent chin but he does look quite hittable, and he turns 38 next month. I can see him starting to get marked-up around the eyes and eating a lot of punches by about the seventh or eighth round, and I am anticipating Moses upping his punch-rate and forcing a stoppage in the ninth or 10th.