Defense wins championships. This is a saying repeated often
in football and basketball but rarely heard in boxing. Ronald ‘Winky” Wright
has taken this motto into the ring with him. Winky methodically worked his
right bag and utilized superior defense to defeat “Sugar” Shane Mosley by a
majority decision for the light middleweight championship.
Two of the scorecards read 115-113 and one had the bout tied at 114-114 but the
scores were not indicative of the fight. Wright (48-3) absorbed every shot
Mosley had to offer and simply shook them off, sometimes even smiling. Mosley
seemed to be getting frustrated because the combinations he was throwing simply
weren’t getting through. Wright used his heavy right jab to set up the left
handed power punches for the later round, the same strategy he used to defeat
Sugar in their first fight.
During the fifth round Wright dropped his hands and let Mosley have five open
shots at his body and head. “I just wanted to let him know he couldn’t hurt
me,” he said after the fight. It sure seemed like that was the truth throughout
the bout. Every punch or combinations Mosley threw Wright was able to shake off
and respond quickly with that right jab. The only success the former
lightweight champ had was in the middle rounds when he was able to turn the
fight away from the methodical grind-it-out style Wright loves. Now it would
seem that these two fighters are headed in different directions.
Wright said he would like to face Trinidad or perhaps De la
Hoya to defend his titles against in the near future. The future isn’t so sweet
for Sugar. His future is very uncertain. This was billed as a fight that would
determine where the ex-champion’s career was heading. Perhaps he was better off
in the lightweight division.
