SHANE MOSLEY vs SERGIO MORA

The plot thickens in tonight’s main event on HBO PPV after Sergio Mora failed to make weight at the first attempt for his 12-round junior middleweight bout with Shane Mosley at the Staples Center, Los Angeles.
 
Mora eventually came in under the 154-pound limit, but it is usually not a good sign when a fighter fails to make weight, especially when one considers that Mora in large part blamed weight struggles for his loss to Vernon Forrest in their rematch.
 
If Mora is strong at the weight, I give him a great chance. If he is weight-drained, Mosley will probably bully him into defeat. We won’t know for sure till the fight starts.
 
However, the fact that Mora agreed to lose the weight is, I think, a good sign. He seemed eager not to be seen to have any unfair advantage, and he has the usual day and a half to rehydrate.
 
Mora has had something of a stop-and-go career, although he won the first season of The Contender and upset the odds by defeating Forrest in the first of their two bouts.
 
It seems to me that Mora has taken on a fresh commitment to his boxing career. Mora has acquired the services of the highly knowledgeable agent Cameron Dunkin and he has signed a promotional contract with Golden Boy Promotions, which also promotes Mosley. If Mora’s career is going to take off, finally, it has to start tonight. A defeat will, I fear, have people dismissing Mora as a fighter who never really had it in him to be consistent at the higher levels of the sport.
 
Mora has talked a good fight, saying that he feels the stars are aligned for him tonight. He says he had an excellent training camp, which, he says, was not the case when Forrest beat him. At 29, Mora is the younger man by a decade in Saturday’s fight. In a bout that coincides with the Mexican Independence celebrations, Mora should be the crowd’s favourite in this all-Los Angeles fight.
 
Mosley, though, has vast experience and he looked so good when knocking out Antonio Margarito in January of last year that it is easy to see why he is the oddsmakers’ favourite. Yet Mosley struggled against Ricardo Mayorga in his last fight before meeting Margarito, and apart from his strong second round he was outclassed by Floyd Mayweather Jr. last May.
 
There is a possibility that Mora is getting Mosley at just the right time. Mora has the height, reach, quickness and reflexes to make this a long, difficult night for Sugar Shane, and I understand that the “Latin Snake” will be fighting as well as boxing, that he will try to be exciting rather than boxing a safety first fight. I am always concerned when a fighter misses weight, but all sets of scales do not weigh the same and it is conceivable that Mora simply miscalculated.

I’m looking forward to the fight.
 
SUBSCRIBERS’ SECTION: Mora-Mosley wagering suggestion and Graham’s pick, plus previews, picks and thoughts on Alvarez-Baldomir, Escalante-De Leon, Maccarinelli-Frenkel, Brook-Jennings and more.