Round by Round: Weekly Boxing Notes

Sugar and the Matador
If you’d asked me, oh, two weeks ago what the implications of tomorrow night’s Sugar Shane Mosley/Ricardo “The Matador” Mayorga fight were, I would have had a quick answer for you. ‘There are none,” I would have said.

Not so fast. Since then, talk has been rampant about a possible Antonio Margarito/Shane Mosley fight for early 2009 which means that Sugar Shane’s bout with Mayorga is suddenly loaded with consequences. Mosley is an excellent opponent for Margarito, a high-profile ex-pound-for-pound champ who still has some mustard on the fastball, as he showed in his donnybrook with Miguel Cotto last November. A Mosley/Margarito bout likely would do respectable PPV numbers and also be a hell of a fight to boot. Presuming that Margarito emerged with the W, it would continue his upwards trajectory into crossover stardom.

Of course, it’s by no means a given that Tony M would beat Shane. By the commutative property, you’d have to give Margs the edge. He beat Cotto in a great fight, and Cotto very narrowly beat Mosley in a great fight. The X factor is that Mosley is a little more savvy than Cotto. Cotto is just beginning to learn how to be a boxer, and he doesn’t know how to move around the ring, put rounds in the bank, and conserve energy at the same time. Mosley, however, knows that style in and out, and even at 37, he’s in impeccable condition and very rarely tires.

Bottom line – Margarito/Mosley is must-see TV for any boxing fan and let’s all hope it gets made as soon as Sugar Shane finishes Mayorga. My prediction? He gores the Matador in ten.

Berto on the Cusp
Another fight on tomorrow night’s card, almost a co-headliner if you will, has enormous consequences for the welterweight division – the WBC belt-holder at 147, Andre Berto, against Stevie “Two-Pound” Forbes. Berto has been a dynamic, hard-punching sensation for years now, and in June he backed into the WBC belt vacated by Floyd Mayweather by knocking out Miki Rodriguez. Although Berto has been tested in his relatively short careeer, most notably in a barnburner against hard-as-nails David Estrada on the Pavlik/Taylor I undercard, to most observers he remains unproven as a championship caliber fighter, as a guy who can potentially move forward to challenge the Cottos and Mosleys and Margaritos of the world.

Beating Stevie Forbes tomorrow night will go a long way towards making believers out the fight community. And if he knocks him out? Fuhgeddaboudit. Stevie Forbes is a pro’s pro in the ring, he knows all the tricks in the book, and he’s never been stopped. There’s rumors floating around of a potential Cotto/Berto bout for early 2009, and if Berto gets past Forbes comfortably, well, it would seem that there would be no other direction for him to go than up to face the big boys.

Oh Pity the Poor Tomato Cans
Did you catch Chris Arreola and Paul Williams last night on Versus? Sheesh. These guys are simply too good to be fighting tomato cans on a Thursday night Versus card. Arreola, the Mexican heavyweight KO artist, dispensed with his man, Israel Garcia (a.k.a. “Opponent”) in three rounds. He came into the fight at 258, a good 20 pounds over his fighting weight, and after the bout he all but admitted to Wally Matthews that he hadn’t trained for the fight. “I gotta get back to the gym,” he said. “I got too caught up in lifting weights. Actually, make that lifting burritos.”

And then there was Williams, fighting at 160 for the first time up from his usual 147, where he holds the WBO belt. One thing you can definitely say about Williams – he’s a living freak at 47, but at 60 he still looks gigantic. He knocked his guy out – I don’t remember the dude’s name – in the first round in devastating fashion. All I could think watching it was that someday PWill is going to fight Pavlik, it just has to happen, and when it does ... oh mercy.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.