One common rejoinder from some fans and writers alike to the Shane Mosley-Sergio Mora draw on Saturday is that it was a fair result because neither man "deserved" to win.
I beg to differ, on two levels.
The man who "deserves" to win a decision is the man who wins the most rounds. That's the main standard for whether anyone "deserves" anything. Reasonable people have certainly differed on who won the most rounds in this particular junior middleweight fight, but I think those on the side who think Mora won the most rounds are wrong.
CompuBox statistics aren't the end-all be-all, but they confirmed what I saw with my eyes. Some have said Mosley mostly swung and missed. But Mosley landed 161 punches to Mora's 93, or 56 percent more. He landed more in every round but one, the 11th, where they tied; Mora only landed in double figures in three rounds. Some have said Mora landed the "scoring" punches, and it's true that in some rounds, he landed a crisp punch or two. But Mosley landed almost double the number of power punches, and some of those weren't just "power" in name -- they were hard shots, harder than anything Mora even could throw. And he was more accurate, too, landing 31 percent to Mora's 18.�This isn't about me blindly scoring a fight for the aggressor. I'm a fan of counterpunchers and boxing technicians. I thought super middleweight Andre Dirrell easily beat Carl Froch last year.
But there's also a problem of false equivalence.�Even if you think it was a close fight, it's not right to say that both sucked and therefore neither deserved to win.
Mora wasn't trying very hard and Mosley was doing everything he could to win. I think if Mora had tried, he probably would have won, actually. How do I know Mora wasn't trying very hard, besides my eyes? Because he said so. "I thought I was winning, so I didn't fight as hard because I have respect for Shane," Mora said. "I didn't want to hurt him." Also, don't mistake Mosley's refusal to criticize the decision as acquiescence that he was in a close fight. Mosley was being a gentleman in the immediate aftermath, like he always does. Look at his Twitter feed and notice how he's become more vocal. Ultimately, even if you think there were close rounds, there's no reason to give those close rounds to the man who was running away and holding on for dear life. When there's a tie on other merits, the more willing combatant should win the round.
If anybody can't get worked up over Mosley-Mora being ruled a draw, I can't blame them. It was a boring, unappetizing fight that doesn't offer much inspiration for passion. But saying neither man deserved to win gives one man too much credit and the other not enough. Neither man was scintillating, but they sucked in different ways, ways that matter. One tried; one didn't. And while neither delivered a great performance, one man landed better, more often and more accurately -- round by round and over the course of the entire fight.
As for the rest of the weekend:
No comments:
Post a Comment