By Michael Amakor – January 25, 2009
Despite, being the older 4 to1 underdog, replacing his dad as his trainer, finalizing his divorce from his wife just two weeks ago, and pending litigation that trailed his preparation for this fight, Shane Mosley now 46-5 (39 ko’s) still comprehensively out-worked, brutalized and stopped the highly touted and over-hyped WBA (147lbs) Welterweight champion Antonio Margarito in the ninth round in front of 20,820 star dotted fans at the Staples Center in Los Angeles last night.
Except for the seventh round where Mosley seemed to be getting careless as a desperate Margarito seemed to surge, Mosley clearly swept all the other rounds with his quick and persistent jabs, and rapid fire one-two combinations to the body and head of Margarito completely dominating the fight with his aggressiveness and ring generalship.
As the rounds progressed he also began landing clean and withering overhand rights and straight punches through the guard of Margarito who was unable to close the distance against the deceptively stronger Mosley who gave him angles and muscled him against the ropes while popping his head with uppercuts and cracking his body with hooks that wore out Margarito against the ropes before more withering head shots forced a knockdown and a standing count which a badly damaged Margarito managed to beat and be saved by the bell to close out the eighth round.
His corner at this point hoping for a miracle succumbed to Margarito’s lame protestations that he could continue and feverishly tried to re-energize him, but it was too late as Mosley whose killer instinct is first rate closed the show with accurate head shots followed by more overhand rights and lunging left hooks that dropped both Fernando Vargas, Ricardo Mayorga in his previous fight, and now Margarito down against the ropes forcing the referee Raul Caiz to intercede before Mosley could land a career ending punch at the 43rd second of the round.
At 37, instead of seeing his career slow down to the brink of contemplating retirement after poor performances like his generational compatriots Oscar De la Hoya and Roy Jones, the Mosley express train accelerates faster with this rejuvenating back to back performance, already the buzz has began for a lucrative title unification against the WBA’S Andre Berto to name a few. For the 30 year old Margarito who fell to 37-6 (27ko’s) his loss was doubly costly as it was discovered that his hands were being wrapped with an illegal substance that would have solidified into a Plaster of Paris type protection for his hands that would have given him a huge advantage over Mosley during the fight if the subterfuge were not spotted by Mosley’s camp.
As one of the most despised forms of cheating in boxing from time immemorial, this stigma of leaden fists is bound to follow Margarito for a long time and has already began to cast a huge shadow over his immediate and most impressive win over Miguel Cotto last year with ring pundits already postulating that Cotto got beaten not by Margarito but by treacherous hands of stone.
As in September, I once again ran out of gas in the 10th & 11th championship rounds of October & November with this column, but I recovered to complete them and will unleash a few more flurries to close out the 12th and final round.
In the first week of October, Hassan N’Dam won a UD over Curtis Stevens in an eliminator for the right to challenge Jermaine Taylor who defeated aging Sam Soliman to regain the IBF Middleweight title. How Taylor even earned this title shot is another story altogether, but it is all irrelevant as he is now the champion. However he will not have too much time to savor his victory as he has assault and battery charges pending against him and an upcoming court fight that may turn out to be the toughest fight of his life, just when things started to look up for him in boxing, we wish him luck.
