Roach: Mosley fought to survive
AFTER POUND-FOR-POUND king Manny Pacquiao dropped Sugar Shane Mosley in the third round with a left hook, the look on Mosley’s face showed he was scared beyond belief.
This set the tone for the rest of the fight and what was hyped as a battle turned out to be a minor skirmish with the 39-year-old Mosley refusing to engage Pacquiao in any form of combat.
“I don’t think he (Mosley) tried to win the fight,” said celebrated trainer Freddie Roach. “I think he just tried to survive and when you get to that point in boxing, I think it’s time to retire.”
Before the fight, Pacquiao told strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza: “If Mosley wants to go toe to toe and come after me and try to knock me out in the first round, I’ll get him out.”
Besides his constant running which drew boos from the jampacked MGM Grand Garden Arena, a rare moment in a Pacquiao fight, Mosley was on survival mode.
And although Pacquiao chased and tried to catch him in the last three rounds, the experience and guile of the first African-American Pacquiao faced and the Filipino’s own problem of stiffness in his left leg helped save Mosley from being stopped.
Manny appeared to be slower than in his previous fights where his hand speed accentuated his explosive power against the much bigger and taller Antonio Margarito and the hard-hitting Miguel Cotto.
The blinding speed was absent and Ariza noted that Pacquiao, who trained relentlessly for eight weeks, never missing a day in the gym, had probably overtrained for the fight.
Normally, Pacquiao trains a maximum of six or seven weeks, which celebrated trainer Freddie Roach has always considered good enough for a fighter of Pacquiao’s caliber.
There were times in training where both Ariza and Roach had to try and hold him back but Pacquiao often had his way, going an extra two rounds in sparring or on the punch mitts.
One other factor that worked against Pacquiao and helped Mosley was what was first believed to be cramps that slowed down Pacquiao as he chased the former three-time world champion.
Ariza clarified that “it wasn’t cramps. It was a stiffness in his left front calf,” a condition which also happened even in his first fight with Juan Manuel Marquez.
The strength and conditioning guru attributed the stiffness to “dehydration” and Ariza blamed it on Manny’s failure to take a rest. He pointed out that Pacquiao “ran on Thursday, just two days before the fight.”
Ariza was angry at the manner in which Mosley “got scared after he tasted the power” of Manny when he dropped him in round three.
It was similar to the Joshua Clottey fight when Pacquiao hurt the Ghana fighter with a vicious body shot and his opponent covered up and went into a survival-mode shell.
“Mosley didn’t like to take any risks or take any chances,” said Ariza.
But to his credit, he survived the greatest fighter of all time in Pacquiao and walked away protecting his record of never being knocked down and at least $5 million richer.
