Differences between Mosley and Judah: Why Mosley should emerge victorious come May 31!

Throughout the week, Shane Mosley and Zab Judah have been promoting their fight on their press tour. This fight is a 12 round welterweight bout (but no title on the line!?) and it's being televised on HBO PPV.

Both fighters are coming off losses to Miguel Cotto in the last big fight that they have had. Each combatant is fully capable of selling a PPV fight against a bigger name or superstar in the sport (such as Oscar De la hoya, Floyd Mayweather, or Miguel Cotto), but it remains questionable as to how well they'll do at the box office in a PPV against one another in the absence of those bigger names.

HBO World Championship Boxing or even Boxing After Dark may very well have been the better looks for the telecast of this event, as it is definitely not a PPV quality fight, but I won't complain either way due to the fact that I rarely pay to watch PPV boxing matches. I usually watch them for free at my local sportsbar, which is by far the best sportsbar in my state and probably one of the top sportsbars in the country.

I view this fight as an opportunity for Mosley to make one last great stand for a run at greater opportunities, as the clock is ticking on the career of the 35 year old Hame of Famer. He wants another run at a championship or a big money fight, so he knows he has to beat Judah impressively. I believe he is going to do just that. Mosley is on another level from Judah in almost every facet of the game except for age and power.

Judah's power might be be neutralized by Shane's toughness and how well Shane can take a punch. Cotto hit Mosley with some murderous shots both to the head and body and he still couldn't break Mosley's will. With the shots that Cotto did land on Mosley in the first seven rounds, he still found himself hurt, on the receiving end of some fire that was coming back at him, and he was in retreat the last four rounds trying to run out the clock and finish the fight.

With Judah, it was just the opposite against Cotto. Judah had a good first round when he rocked Cotto with an uppercut and was hit with a low blow shortly thereafter, but after that Cotto pretty much assumed full command of the fight. By the 6th round, Judah's will was broken, he was taking a beating, and had the look of a discouraged and defeated fighter by round 9. When the going was getting rougher and rougher, the tough certainly did not get going. Instead, it crumbled to the canvas in the eleventh round.

I'm not just using the Cotto fight as my basis for picking the winner here either. History does not tell lies. Look at Judah's recent big fights. From Baldomir, to Mayweather, to Cotto, they all have the same pattern. Judah gets off to a good start, the opponent adjusts to what Judah has done in order to start so well, and Judah doesn't have a plan B, C, or D after that. He then loses focus and is broken down as the fight goes progresses.

Mosley is the exact opposite. If what he is doing is not working for him in a tough fight, he will move to other plans to get himself back into the fight. He did it against De la hoya both times, coming on in the 2nd half of those fights. Particularly in the first fight with Oscar, Mosley switched to southpaw in the eighth round and confused Oscar for the remainder of that fight by fighting from a new position and switching up. Against Cotto as well, he was taking a beating in the middle rounds, but got up on his toes at about the 7th round, moved around a little bit, and started setting Cotto up for the power shots that hurt Cotto in rounds 9 and 10.Judah is more skilled and more athletically gifted than most fighters who are active in the game today.

Judah can talk to Vernon Forrest and Winky Wright all he wants in order to get tips on how to beat Mosley, but skills are one thing and intelligence is another. Judah has some tools to work with, but we've seen what happens when his opponents take away his toolbox. What happens? He can't work and doesn't know what to do, and in essence, slips into survival mode and gets broken down. Judah's weaker mindset and limited ability to adapt in a challenging fight are made to order for Mosley in this case.

My impression early on is that Mosley should knock Judah out in about eight rounds or so.