Mosley Retains Title With TKO Over Taylor

LAS VEGAS —  A bit of advice for Oscar De La Hoya: Go to 154 pounds as soon as possible and do not look back.

World Boxing Council welterweight champion Shane Mosley, looking more terrifying and unbeatable than ever, bolstered his argument that he is not only the best in his weight division but the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world with a complete and devastating performance against Shannan Taylor in a Caesars Palace ballroom Saturday night in front of a sellout crowd of 3,000 plus.

Mosley (37-0, 34 knockouts) won by technical knockout when Jeff Fenech, Taylor’s trainer, stopped the fight at the end of the fifth round.

But this fight really ended in the first round when an overhand right by Mosley knocked Taylor down and left him so groggy that, upon standing on unsteady legs, he walked over to Mosley in a neutral corner as if Mosley were his trainer.

Only the bell saved Taylor.

Few outside his native Australia seriously thought Taylor was in Mosley’s class, but the performance Mosley put on would have been enough to leave the best of fighters looking helpless.

Mosley’s speed, movement and punching power--demonstrated with deadly overhand rights and mind-numbing body shots--were all operating at peak efficiency.

Early in the fight, Taylor, hit with a combination, asked Mosley, “Is that all you got?”

As Taylor soon found out, it was more than enough.

“I wasn’t sure where I was after the first round,” Taylor admitted.

Once Taylor finally reached his own corner, it took Fenech 20-30 seconds to get his fighter to even remember he was at Caesars Palace.

As the fight progressed, Taylor, who suffered his first loss after going 28-0-1 with 18 knockouts, resorted to the only strategy he had left--dirty tactics.

He constantly bearhugged Mosley, held on for dear life and tried to crash into the ropes with his superior opponent. In the fourth round, referee Vic Drakulich subtracted a point from Taylor’s total for illegal moves.

None of it mattered. Mosley shook it all off with a good-natured smile and went back to work, an artist painting his latest masterpiece.

Mosley’s final strokes came at the close of the fifth round. He buried two body shots deep into Taylor’s stomach and side, sending the fighter from New South Wales back into the ropes. Before Taylor could recover, Mosley added a right hand to the temple followed by a roundhouse left to the side of the face.

Mercifully, the bell rang, apparently saving Taylor again.

But Fenech took a look at his fighter and signaled that Taylor’s night was over.

“I want my guy to live to fight another day,” Fenech said.

“What can I say?” said Taylor. “I lost to the best fighter in the world.”

The only other man who can reasonably lay claim to that title is Felix Trinidad.

And with Trinidad headed to 160 pounds, Mosley will set his sights on unifying his own division. He is expected to fight again on June 16, probably against Vernon Forrest.

As for Taylor, he turned to boxing to avoid following his father into the coal mines.

But after facing Mosley, Taylor couldn’t be blamed for thinking even the coal mines looked better.

In the semi-main event, Lance Whitaker of Van Nuys improved to 23-1 with 19 knockouts by knocking out Oleg Maskaev (20-4, 15) of Uzbekistan at 1:03 of the second round of their scheduled 12-rounder.

The victory enabled Whitaker to hold onto his WBC Continental Americas heavyweight title. But more important, it put him in bona fide contention for a world heavyweight title.

“I wanted to show I can play with the big boys,” Whitaker said.

Whitaker, a pretty big boy himself at 256 pounds, didn’t do much in the first round, but in the second he landed a right hand that staggered Maskaev, then finished him off with a left-right combination that sent Maskaev crashing to the canvas.

Maskaev was able to roll over on his stomach, but that’s as far as he got before the count reached 10.

And how far can Whitaker go in the heavyweight division? That has suddenly become an intriguing question.