Mayweather absorbs Mosley’s early power, rolls to blowout win
He’s still Mr. Perfect.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. did what he does best, which is make the other guy miss while hitting him more often. Shane Mosley learned that the hard way as Mayweather dominated the final 10 rounds to win a unanimous decision in their 12-round welterweight fight Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden.
Mayweather, now 41-0, won going away on the scorecards, with judges Adalaide Byrd and Dave Moretti scoring it 119-109 and Robert Hoyle 118-110.
“I came here to give the fans what they wanted — a toe-to-toe fight,” Mayweather said. “It wasn’t the same style for me that I usually have, but I wanted to be more aggressive.”
Mayweather, who weighed 146 pounds and earned $22.5 million, was a 4-1 betting favorite at the first bell before a crowd of 15,117. Mosley, the reigning WBA welterweight champ whose belt was not at stake, weighed 147 and made $7 million.
Mayweather came close to being knocked down when Mosley rocked him with a huge right hand just over two minutes into the second round. His knees buckled, but somehow Mayweather remained upright.
Mosley nailed him with four more big shots but could not drop Mayweather, who showed he can take a punch.
“It’s a contact sport,” Mayweather said. “You’re going to get hit. You’ve just got to suck it up and keep fighting, and that’s what I did.”
Mosley said: “I hit him with the right hand, and after I landed it, I thought I needed to knock him out. But I needed to do it sooner than later, and when I didn’t get it, he adjusted and I couldn’t get to him. He was too quick, and I was too tight.”
The second-round assault by Mosley appeared to serve as a wake-up call for Mayweather. He began to assume control, using his jab to set up Mosley for overhand shots, both left- and right-handed.
He had Mosley backpedaling from big right hands to the chin in the seventh and eighth rounds.
Mosley, who said he was hampered by a stiff neck, was starting to slow down, and Mayweather appeared to sense it. He kept up the pressure, kept throwing the jab and setting up the right hand that kept landing on Mosley’s head.
“I think it was the long layoff that hurt me,” said Mosley, who last fought Jan. 24, 2009, when he stopped Antonio Margarito. “I wasn’t able to adjust.”
Mayweather was in complete control as the fight reached its latter stages. His ability to physically compete with Mosley, a natural welterweight, was impressive. He never backed down or gave ground when Mosley leaned on him and tried to bully him. That and Mayweather’s always-superb defense had him in front.
“The game plan was to lay on the attack,” Mayweather said. “We probably could have pressed the attack a lot sooner.”
During the second half of the fight, Mosley had little behind his punches and looked all of his 38 years old. He was constantly beaten to the punch by Mayweather, whose ring generalship remained superior and his right hand deadly accurate.
The final CompuBox stats showed Mayweather with edges in punches thrown (477 to Mosley’s 452), punches landed (208-92), jabs landed (85-46) and power punches thrown and connected (267-169 thrown, 123-46 landed). Mosley’s lone edge was in jabs thrown, 283-210.
“Mosley is a warrior,” Mayweather said. “He came to fight, and he did what I asked him to do outside the ring (by submitting to random pre-fight drug-testing).”
In the co-feature, welterweight Saul Alvarez, Golden Boy’s Mexican star of the future, struggled early against veteran Juan Miguel Cotto in his Las Vegas debut but dominated most of the fight to remain undefeated at 32-0-1 with a ninth-round technical knockout.
Alvarez, 19, nearly went down in the first round after Cotto (31-2-1) tagged him with a vicious left hook. But Alvarez scored a second-round knockdown of Cotto with a right to the face.
Alvarez, who led 78-73 on all three scorecards heading into the ninth round, pummeled Cotto with several big shots. With Cotto absorbing too much punishment, referee Tony Weeks stopped it with nine seconds remaining in the round.
Contact reporter Steve Carp at scarp@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2913.
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