Anyone looking for a reason to rank Shane Mosley ahead of Roy Jones Jr. on the mythical pound-for-pound list need only look at Mosley's utter destruction of undefeated Top Ten contender Shannan Taylor. Two weeks after Jones slept through his 10 round sparring session with Derrick Harmon, Mosley proved that not all one-sided fights are cures for insomnia. For five rounds, Mosley attacked his opponent with equal doses of precision and ferocity. When it was over, Taylor was battered and bruised, barely able to make the walk back to his corner. Roy Jones used to fight like this... but that was a long time ago.

A virtual unknown in the U.S., Shannan Taylor brought to the ring a reputation as a hard working, hard throwing Aussie phenom. He would allegedly come into the ring against Mosley as the bigger man, and probably the stronger puncher. Neither were true. By fight time, Taylor had put 10 pounds on top of the 147 he weighed at the official scaling. Mosley had gained 12. If Taylor, like so many welterweights, felt that he would hold a size advantage over the one-time lightweight champion, he was sadly mistaken.

Taylor began the fight by meeting Mosley at center ring and pumping a hard jab across the distance. The champion merely glided away from these punches with his underrated footwork. Mosley watched Taylor intently, and after the third attempt with the triple jab resulted in a glancing shot, Mosley answered in kind. His jab was a single shot, but it was blinding in speed. It landed hard on Taylor's face and made him take a half step back. Taylor may have known he would be outsped in this fight, but didn't yet know by how much.

Mosley let Taylor miss with a few one-twos before he began firing his own shots. Soon, Shane was firing a big one-two, and his handspeed drew gasps from the audience. Digging his jab into Taylor's belly, Mosley began working the body in typical devastating fashion. A moment later, he dug his right hand into Taylor's side, then again. Taylor's meddle would be tested early.

With about 30 seconds left in the opening round, Taylor abandoned his frequent jab and lead with the right hand. Mosley was looking jab, and the punch landed clean on the champion's face. If Taylor carried power into the ring with him, Mosley had felt it. Not to be outdone, Mosley answered with a right of his own. Having established a tremendous speed advantage, Mosley reached back and uncorked a massive overhand right. The punch sailed through Taylor's face and made his right leg go numb. As Taylor's back knee buckled, he crashed back onto the canvas stiff as a board, and the impact of his head on the canvas may have been as hard as the punch itself.

Flat on his back and spread eagle, Taylor looked done. His head rolled up in a clockwise motion as his eyes rolled counter-clockwise in his skull. Blood dripped from his nose. Somehow he got to his feet, but then he wobble-hopped across the ring to the neutral corner that Mosley was waiting in. Mosley politely exited so that Vic Drakulich could complete the mandatory eight. Somehow, Taylor convinced him that he could continue. But the round was over, and Taylor wearily returned to his corner. Once there, he denied having been knocked down, and his trainer would later claim that as late as the fifth, Taylor still wasn't aware that he had been dropped.

There should be no question about Taylor's toughness. Most fighters would never have rebounded from the knockdown in the first... but there was Taylor at the start of the second, coming out with the jab and trying his best to fight the pound-for-pound best boxer in the world. But Shane Mosley was just too tough.

Mosley snapped out his own jab early in the second. Sometimes Mosley flicks several lightning quick jabs in a row, other times he steps into a single jab with full force. One of those heavy single jabs snapped Taylor's head straight back early in the second round and blood began pouring from the challenger's nose. Mosley's speed meant that he could do whatever he wanted, and in this round he wanted to mix up the traditional one-two. Mosley would fire a quick jab to Taylor's face then bury his right hand in Taylor's side. After a few of those made an impression, Mosley mixed it up, firing the jab right into the pit of Taylor's stomach and then followed with a right upstairs. In typical Mosley fashion, these upstairs right hands were thrown with the exaggerated effort that has come to define Mosley's intensity. So fast. So accurate. So devastating. Each right landed flush on Taylor's face, and again he was lucky to survive.

For his part, Taylor could do little more than fire a few jabs and try to land a big right. But he rarely did. In the first three rounds, he landed one clean shot per round. The rest of the time, he tried to defend himself, but not even that was working. At one point in the third round, Taylor had both his gloves up in front of his face, only a few inches apart. But even that wasn't a tight enough defense for Mosley, who threw a perfectly straight right hand with such velocity that it sailed through Taylor's gloves and landed right on his nose. Taylor was showing his grit, but Mosley was content to simply chop down the tree in front of him. Time and again, Mosley feinted upstairs and fired right hands to the body. Some of these punches landed with a surprisingly loud thud. Taylor was being punished severely to the body, and by the end of the third round, his clinches began getting rough.

In the fourth round, Mosley found that he could fire the down-and-up one-two whenever he wanted to. Twice Mosley pounded Taylor to the body and then nailed him in the face with a big right. The second time, Taylor was wobbled and he grabbed Mosley in a bear hug and slammed him back into the turnbuckle. Vic Drakulich, a fairly new face on the Nevada referee circuit (and one who's recently graduated to championship bout status) quickly took a point away from Taylor to take control of the fight. Taylor had to be warned a minute later for continuing the rough tactics inside. It was to the Australian's advantage to brawl with Mosley, but his blatant shoving and arm-twisting smacked of desperation, especially when his efforts followed crisp Mosley bombs.

Through four rounds, Mosley had been teeing off on Taylor like Tiger Woods practicing his 1-wood at the driving range: one at a time with full force. Mosley hadn't unleashed many of the beautiful flurries that his highlight reel is filled with, but his strategy was no less effective. Like so many opponents before him, Taylor was simply getting chopped to pieces. Unable to find Mosley because of the champion's head movement and exceptional footwork, Taylor was simply eating almost everything Mosley threw at him. In the fifth, it got even worse.

Mosley opened the fifth with two gigantic flush overhand rights, each of which raised a loud "ooooh!" from the crowd. Taylor may not have looked like a star this night, but his chin is amazing. These shots would have leveled most welterweights. The pace slowed a bit, but only a bit. Mosley uncorked a left hook that startled Taylor, who had grown accustomed to the steady diet of Mosley right hands. But the two men clinched a few times after Mosley threw a few rare misses. Taylor actually had his best moment of the night right before it all ended. As the fifth wound down, he countered Mosley with another nice right hand. A second right landed as Mosley came in to Taylor looking to clinch after a miss. But Taylor's arms were moving, Mosley wasn't able to grab on, and Shannan threw a quick four punch combo that glanced off Mosley's face.

Being hit must have made Mosley mad, because he retaliated with the most devastating body blow thrown in the ring since Roy Jones broke Virgil Hill's ribs. Mosley stuffed Taylor with a right uppercut, and as he held Taylor in place on the end of that punch, swung his entire body into a short left hook to the liver. It was a brutal blow thrown with the nastiest of intentions, and it sucked all of the wind from Taylor's lungs. Taylor immediately curled up his injured side and retreated to the ropes. Mosley gave chase as the final seconds ticked away. He landed a long right as Taylor backed to the ropes, then reached around his elbow to land another left hook to the trouble spot. Mosley was doubling this hook, and the second one pulled across Taylor's face simultaneous with the bell to end the round. Taylor was saved from KO... sort of.

Drakulich jumped between the men to halt the action, and Taylor half-fell into his arms. His legs were gone, he hadn't quite caught his breath, and the final left hook to the jaw only further disoriented him. He hobbled back to his corner, and the fight was over. Taylor's trainer, Jeff Fenech stopped the bout. Taylor might have fought on, so great is his will, but he would have quickly been finished. Even after Mosley was running around the ring celebrating the decision, Taylor didn't look completely recovered from the body shot. Some will slight the manner in which Taylor retired, but they shouldn't. The truth is that it's a miracle Taylor fought at all past the first round. Few fighters would have risen from that knockdown.

And so Shane Mosley adds even more luster to his sterling record: 37-0/34 KO. Who can beat him? Oscar DelaHoya can't, and he knows it. Does anyone give Vernon Forrest or Six Heads Lewis a chance against Mosley? Maybe they'd be in the fight for a few rounds. Believe it or not, Mosley's biggest challenge will likely come from the 140 lb. division. The winner of Judah-Tszyu might give Mosley his biggest test... but they'd better hurry. Scaling in at a completely fit 159 through the ropes, Mosley may soon find that his year-round workout schedule is bulking him into the junior middleweight division faster than he can mow down his current division.

On the undercard, Lance "Mount" Whitaker stunned tough-as-nails Oleg Maskaev with a surprise knockout in the second round. Maskaev took the first round on the Boxing Chronicle card by twice backing the 6'8" Whitaker into a corner and flurrying upstairs and down. Maskaev didn't seem to have the usual steam on his punches, perhaps the result of an eroded self-confidence after his knockout loss at the hands of Kirk Johnson. Maskaev's flurries came between extended periods of inactivity, as he stayed far away from Whitaker when Lance pumped out his lazy jab.

In fact, Whitaker looked to be coasting in the first round, as he pawed with a jab thrown from the waist and lightly hooked off that jab with a range-finder. But that jab must be a lot heavier than it looks... because that was the case with Whitaker's right hand. Early in the second round, as Maskaev again backed Whitaker to the ropes, Mount threw what looked like a soft right hand at Oleg. But like Big George Foreman (version 2.0), sometimes those light punches aren't so light. Maskaev's chin caved in under the blow and the Russian staggered straight back across the ring. Whitaker kept his cool and followed him, throwing casual punches at him along the way. Most of them were blocked, but when Maskaev stopped a few feet short of the ropes, he took a big right hand flush.

Actually, Whitaker had turned southpaw as he gave chase, and when Maskaev stopped to meet him, Whitaker was jabbing with the right. He threw a light left from this position, but it was the follow-up right hook that won the fight. It was another punch that looked soft, but it hit Maskaev on the left eye and he fell straight back. Referee Jay Nady hovered over Maskaev, who was blank. As Nady counted, you could actually see Maskaev's eye swell up from the punch. Maskaev rolled over by eight, but had only raised himself to push-up level when Nady reached 10. Whitaker KO2.

This was a big win for Whitaker, who has been on a winning streak since his close call loss to Lou Savarese. Although Whitaker called out Lennox Lewis after the fight, the reality is that he'll have to beat a few more top ten candidates before he gets that shot. Although his style isn't spectacular, his power is. At 6'8", 256 pounds, Whitaker will be a force for any heavyweight, regardless of how much more talent they might have. We'd like to see Whitaker in with Kirk Johnson, Michael Grant, Derrick Jefferson, or one of the Klitschkos. Those are heavyweight bouts of giant proportions, and would draw much more intrigue that fraudulent titlist John Ruiz' first "defense." Let's hope that Whitaker, who needs the cash to pay for his child's soaring medical bills, gets some of these paydays.

.....Chris Bushnell