This Saturday night, Shane Mosley (46-8-1, 39 KO’s) will be attempting to capture the vacant WBC International welterweight title in a fight against Pablo Cesar Cano (26-2-1, 20 KO’s) at the Grand Oasis Resort in Cancun, Mexico.
Cano didn’t look so great in his loss to WBA welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi last October, but he also didn’t look good in getting stopped by Erik Morales in September 2011.
Cano could be a lot of problems for Mosley if he fights the way he did against Floyd Mayweather Jr, Manny Pacquiao and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in losing to all three of them. Mosley did not look good in those fights, and he took a lot of punishment in each one of them, in particular his loss to Canelo last year in May.
Cano is pretty slow and easy to hit. Malignaggi and Morales basically beat him using a stiff jab. Mosley has a good jab too, but I don’t expect him to try and win the fight using it. He’s too much of a slugger to take it easy in this fight.
That’s going to play in Cano’s hands because he needs Mosley to stand and trade with him in order for him to have a chance in this fight. If Mosley does what Morales and Malignaggi did against him then he won’t have much of a chance of winning this fight.
Mosley is currently ranked #11 by the WBC at 147, but it’s hard to understand why he’s ranked at all considering that he hasn’t won a fight since January 2009 when he beat Antonio Margarito. Why the WBC has Mosley ranked in their top 15 is anyone’s guess, but it doesn’t matter.
If he wins this fight it’s still highly unlikely that any of the welterweight champions will hand pick him for a title shot. They’re not going to want to do that because of all the heat they’d likely take from boxing fans in facing a fighter with one victory in the past four years with an inflated ranking.