BERT SUGAR'S POST-FIGHT BREAKDOWN

Those with an eye for fistic delicacies need only to look at last Saturday night's demolition of Antonio Margarito by Sugar Shane Mosley for exhibit A.

January 27, 2008 - by Bert Sugar

Before the fight common wisdom had it that Mosley had about as much a chance against Margarito as Daniel had going in against the lions with oddsmakers posting odds against his winning as high as 6-1. But then again, common wisdom has always been an underdog at the betting windows as recent fight odds prove--with Kelly Pavlik a 5-1 favorite over Bernard Hopkins, Oscar De La Hoya a 2-1 favorite over Manny Pacquiao, and Miguel Cotto a 2 1/2-1 favorite over Margarito. After all, or so the reasoning went, Margarito, off his performance against Cotto, was next-to-superhuman, and Mosley, in the Indian summer of his career at 37 and beset by out-of-the-ring distractions, was thought to be merely a tune-up for Margarito before his rematch with Cotto. It was a train of thought that never quite reached its destination.

For what the oddsmakers and the public had done was examine the bottle, not the contents. And the contents were Sugar Shane Mosley.

Even before the sound of the opening bell had stilled and without taking time for thoughtful exploration, Mosley was on the attack launching right-hand bombs over Margarito's slow-to-develop jabs with a follow-through worthy of Nolan Ryan firing a fast ball. And threading the needle's eye by landing them flush on Margarito's unprotected jaw. But these were mere throat clearings for what was to come. For round-after-round, fighting with a combination of power and finesse, Mosley continued to skewer Margarito with right-hand surgical strikes, alternating between head and body shots, many as frightening as a missile launch, and controlling the fight by tying up Margarito whenever he got in close.

Like a juggler who never varies his routine, Margarito continued to plod forward, his movements looking as if they were those of a stork in Spandex trying to gallop. And offering an inviting target for Mosley, whose jabs and right-hands were like needles draw to a lodestone, the lodestone in this case being Margarito's jaw. By the end of the sixth round a queer sense of disquietude had fallen over the pro-Margarito crowd at Staples Center as they began to wonder if their faith in Gibraltar had been misplaced. And Margarito himself, looking as bereft as Robinson Crusoe without a boat, had no idea of how to deal with the rain of punches coming his way from every angle imaginable--and some not so imaginable, as when Mosley shifted his feet to throw a bodacious left hand. Margarito almost bore the look of a Sunday school teacher fully expecting to be hit in the back of the head by an errant spitball.

Margarito showed a little bit of life in the seventh round--the only round he won on one of the judges' scorecards--but when he tried to follow that up in the eighth Mosley caught him with a left hook from hell and then followed with three rights to hammer Margarito into the canvas. Barely making it up before the bell, Margarito staggered off to his corner on legs that were strangers to one another, and although his corner now wanted to stop the one-sided fight, he pleaded for one more round.

But Mosley continued his unspeakable acts of destruction in the ninth, landing both lefts and rights to the head of the defenseless Margarito--proving that Margarito was ambidextrous, capable of being hit with both hands. And after a seven-punch combination Margarito slumped to the canvas, his once granite chin now in smaller, neater pieces with the one-sided bout called to a halt 43 seconds into the round.

So the next time Vegas oddsmakers set the odds with all the solemnity of Moses handing his Tablets telling us that a fighter is "invincible" or "unbeatable," treat all such great "truths" as blasphemous. And run, don't walk, to the betting window and remember to cite the Sugar Shane Mosley-Antonio Margarito fight as a reference.