Sugar Shane Mosley vs. Winky Wright!

[bosshogg23]

Couple of very interesting fights tonight on HBO(9:30 EST).

On the undercard heavyweight Joe Mesi (28-0 with 25 KOs) tries to become a legitimate top 10 fighter against Vassily Jirov (33-1 with 29 KOs). Mesi has fought virtually no one with a name in his career. Jirov is definitely the biggest name so far. His camp was reported to believe that Jirov is near the end of his career and cant hurt Mesi, but has a big enough name to earn some respect. Jirov was a career cruiserweight until Toney defeated him. If this fight goes to a decison I think Jirov has a 50-50 chance to win, otherwise its Mesi's fight to lose.

Shane Mosley(39-2 with 35 KOs) vs Winky Wright(46-3 with 25 KOs) is the main feature. Mosley has the WBC & WBA Jr. Middleweight belts while Wright has the IBF Jr. Middleweight belt. Shane Mosley hasnt wont a fight convincingly since 2001, he has 1 win, 1 no decison and 2 losses since then. Wright hasnt lost since 1999 against Vargas but generally has fought light competition. Mosley is the definite favorite but Wright is no chump. He has been avoided for years because he makes fighters look bad(similar to Chris Byrd in that way). If Mosley is not aggressive in the beginning of the fight, I think he loses. 3 rounds in we should know how the fight will go.

Just a couple side notes, Wright has never lost a fight by knockdown. Secondly Mosley has a fight agreement to fight Felix Trinidad if he wins this fight. That kinda ticked off Wright. So according to rumors, Trinidad will walk Wright into the ring. Should be interesting if that does happen.

Mesi by KO in 8

Mosley by decison

[AlejandroSosa]

I say...

Mesi by TKO in 5...I wasn't impressed with him at all when the Mesi hype-train began, but his last few fights have me believing in him.





I'm also gonna go with Wright by decision. Mosley's best years seem to be behind him, after the ass-kickings he took by Forrest and the DeLaHoya fight which I didn't think he should've won.. so I say Wright.

[sabotai]

I'm so happy this in on HBO and not PPV. These are two fights I really want to see (Comcast doesn't procide PPV to their basic cable cable subscribers. Part of their crusade to make everyone go digital cable)

Anyway.

Mesi vs. Jirov

I'm not so sure I see Mesi winning this one as easily as some people are making it seem. Mesi was less than impressive in his most recent fight with Monte Barrett. He was winnign the fight easily, but once he got knocked down, he struggled a lot. Jirov's fight with Toney showed a lot. This guy can take a punch. Although Mesi probably has more power than Toney, Toney's punches land cleaner than the punches I've seen Mesi throw. And Toney had to land a LOT in order to just knock Jirov down. Even then, a lot of people thought Jirov won the fight.

This will definatly be Mesi's biggest challenge to date. Some might say it's his ONLY challenge to date. How he handles himself in this fight, I think, will determine how well he does in the future. Jirov doesn't have much of a defense, which I think will be the deciding factor.

My prediciton: Mesi by decision. And if it does end in KO, it'll be of the technical veriety. Jirov can take a punch and no matter how many times he gets knocked down, I think he'll keep getting up. Mesi is REALLY going to have to catch him cleanly to knock him out.

Winky Wright vs. Shane Mosley

I'm in the boat that had Mosley losing to De La Hoya. If he wants to win this fight, he needs to not repeat that performance. He got away with it in the De La Hoya fight because De La Hoya, it would seem, doesn't know how to finish fighters off. He goes into cruise control and it costs him fights. It cost him against Trinidad and it cost him against Mosley.

I've only seen Wright fight once (I think I gave a round by round of that fight on this board, as I did with the Mosley - De La Hoya fight. After doing a search, I see he fought on the undercard of the Tarver - Jones fight). I mentioned several times that I thought "Winky" was a dumb name for a boxer. I still think that. :) Why is he named Winky?

Anyway, in his last fight, I had it a draw while the judges scored it a landslide for Winky. Maybe they saw somethign I didn't, or I saw something they didn't. We all know that judges don't score punches to the body, and his opponent that night seemed to work the body a lot, which may have cost him the fight by not going for the head.

So in the last fight for both of these guys, they both looked like they didn't want to fight. The one who actually shows up and determines the pace will win it by decision. I'll be surprised if I see a lot of life out of either of them.

The reason I want to really see this fight is because it's a rare thing these days to see a unification fight for all 3 titles.

It's a really a toss up IMO, I'll take Winky. THe more I think about it, the more it seems liek Mosley just doesn't want to fight anymore. As they say in the Rocky movies, he doesn't the "they Eye of the Tiger" anymore. He's just not hungry. Winky is the one coming in the underdog, which might be what he needs to get him going.

[BigJohn&TheLions]

Looks like Sugar wasn't so sweet...

[GrantDawg]

Looks like Sugar wasn't so sweet...
No doubt. Winky made him look really bad. He was so much bigger than Mosely, he truly did look like a man slapping a boy around.

Jirov came on pretty well at then end. Too bad it was too little, too late. If that fight had been twelve, one of those guys would have went down.