SHANE MOSLEY KO12 (2:59) RICARDO MAYORGA

The finish was spectacular, but Shane Mosley’s struggle with Ricardo Mayorga for the first 11 rounds of Saturday’s junior middleweight bout raised some questions. Should it really have been as difficult as it turned out to be for Mosley?

At the age of 37, Mosley clearly isn’t the fighter he was. However, he was meeting a Mayorga who was motivated and determined. Mayorga was the bigger, stronger man and his awkwardness, and the threat of his heavy right-hand punches, made him a rough handful for the more polished Mosley.

I was surprised, though, how troublesome it seemed to be for Mosley to get his timing right. He landed some big right hands from time to time but there was no consistency in his fighting. It was as if everything was laboured, as if he couldn’t quite get a firm grip on things.

The finish, though, made up in large measure for what had gone before. When Mosley hurt Mayorga with the right hand he didn’t let him recover. Belaboured to his knees for the first of the two knockdowns in round 12, Mayorga looked totally spent. He dragged himself up with a great effort and with the round almost over it looked as if he would be saved by the bell — but Mosley’s leaping left hook, reminiscent of Floyd Patterson knocking out Ingemar Johansson, produced the literally last-second KO.

This was one of the most astonishing finishes I can recall. Although Shannon Briggs stopped Sergei Liakhovich with one second remaining. one always had the sense that Liakhovich was on the verge of being stopped. In the Mosley-Mayorga fight, though, both men looked tired going into the last round. Mosley’s best right hands had failed to budge Mayorga in the earlier rounds. It looked a stone-cold certainty that the fight would go the distance. That’s the beauty of boxing, though: things happen that you don’t expect.

Had it not been for Mosley’s last-minute fireworks the scoring would have been interesting, with one judge having Mosley up by a point, another judge scoring Mayorga a point ahead while the third judge gave Sugar Shane a five-point advantage. HBO’s Harold Lederman had Mosley walking away with it, but I saw this as a one-point fight either way. Maybe I was seeing it all wrong, but I had Mayorga with the one-point lead. There were rounds where not a lot was happening and Mayorga just seemed to be doing a bit more. Mosley always looked the better fighter but that didn’t mean he was winning the fight.

This version of Mosley probably wouldn’t have beaten Andre Berto, whose greater strength, youth, hand speed and athleticism were too much for Steve Forbes in their welterweight title fight on the same show. Antonio Margarito? I fear that he would run right over the Mosley we saw on Saturday night.

Yet the finish was so dramatic it keeps Mosley firmly in the picture for major fights. He produced surely one of the greatest last-round finishes in ring history, and no one who saw it is likely to forget it.