SUGAR SHANE STILL FEELS SWEET

August 22, 2003 - by Ron Borges

Sugar Shane Still Feels Sweet August 22, 2003 Ron Borges Shane Mosley knows there are doubters but he has no doubts. None about himself. None about his corner. None about what will happen on Sept. 13 when both he and Oscar De La Hoya will step into the ring together seeking the same thing - some form of redemption.

De La Hoya will be there to engage in a search for the traditional form of redemption in boxing. He will be there trying to defeat the only man who has ever clearly beaten him. Shane Mosley will be there seeking something much different than that.

While De La Hoya will be there seeking only victory, Mosley will be in search of a personal resurrection as well as a professional one after two long years of hearing and reading about how he was no longer the man everyone thought him to be.

For a 31-year-old athlete in the prime of his life, it is difficult to read your sporting obituaries but it is worse still to read hints that you have changed as a man. Whispers that you have become difficult. Suggestions that you are now a fistic diva who no longer understands who he is or what his value may be in boxing's volatile market place. It is bothersome to listen to people question your talent but you can grow used to that when you live in so public an arena as boxing. It is far more troubling to hear them question who you are as a man.

Since losing back-to-back fights to Vernon Forrest and being involved in a disappointing no contest in a three-round debacle with Raul Marquez that was supposed to be a tune-up for the rematch with De La Hoya, Mosley has heard far too many people questioning his future. He has listened to too many critics suggest he and his father and trainer, Jack Mosley, had lost sight of what a good payday was and what a fighter who has been beaten twice brings to the negotiating table against as big a commodity as De La Hoya.

It was wearying to hear it over and over, just as it was tiring to keep being told that a man you had soundly defeated deserves vastly more money than you do for a rematch. Yet, in the end, Mosley swallowed what was left of his pride and agreed to an odd contract that promoter Bob Arum says includes $500,000 in side money that will go to the winner.

That money is to be put on display in Las Vegas the week of the fight so everyone coming into town can see it. This is especially enticing in a town like Vegas, where fast money and the risk one takes to get it have built the place into a budding metropolis adrift in a sea of desert sand.

Yet Mosley is irritated that Arum has used that side deal to promote what is sure to be one of the best fights of the year because, he contends, that money is already his. Mosley insists there is no such side proposition and Arum knows it. He says he's getting the extra $500,000 he demanded win or lose, although frankly he doesn't intend to lose any way. What he intends to do is make it clear that what Bob Arum is saying deviates significantly from the truth.

"That's a lot of bologna,'' Mosley said of the $500,000 De La Hoya supposedly shaved off his purse and put into a winner take all pot. "That is really mine any way and Arum knows it. Bob Arum is a piece of work. He needs to cut that crap out and let us fight. This fight is history. He shouldn't even let himself get involved in it like this. This is destiny. It's offensive to me that he's putting himself in the middle of it. This is between me and Oscar. Bob Arum has nothing to do with it and that $500,000 is not at risk.''

The fact that the world still believes it is, in some ways is an example of what Mosley has had to go through since first defeating De La Hoya. That night he thought he had ascended to the throne room of boxing only to learn the hard lesson that the man who beats The Man is not necessarily The Man.

Soon after that, Mosley was unhappy with his purses, his promoter and the way he was being seen. Not longer after that, he was even unhappier to see himself pounded to the floor twice by Vernon Forrest in the first of two consecutive losses to him.

How a fighter goes from being considered among the half dozen best pound-for-pound boxers in the world into what he has been portrayed as after those defeats baffled Mosley for a time but he has grown to accept his fate because that was always one of the things he did best in boxing. Shane Mosley always could adjust. And so he has again.

That's how he beat De La Hoya in their first fight to win the welterweight title and lift himself onto boxing's big stage. It is also, he believes, how he fell from that stage because after that victory and the string of knockout wins that had preceded it Shane Mosley made an adjustment of an odd sort. He stopped doing what had made him what he was and began believing he was someone, or at least something, else.

"Those two losses helped me and I thank Vernon for them,'' Mosley said this week from his training camp in Big Bear, Calif. "It made me reach back to doing the things I used to do. That's what I'd been missing. "Now I'm back on my toes more. I'm throwing more punches and not just standing there flat-footed trying to knock somebody out. I'm using angles again and throwing body shots. I'm the old Sugar Shane.''

But why, one wonders, would anyone change anything after winning 36 straight fights and both the lightweight and welterweight titles? Why would anyone with an ounce of common sense change their approach at that point? Although many might ponder that for a long time, Mosley believes the answer is simple and something that happens to many people after success comes in an unbroken string for too long.

"I got away from it because I was knocking out a lot of guys,'' Mosley (38-2, 35 KO, one no contest) said. "I think it was human nature. When you're comfortable you get a little lackadaisical. You forget sometimes the things that got you to the top. You start to think you're something you're not or you forget what you did to get to the top and how you did it.

"Now I'm back doing the drills I used to do. I'm back using what God gave me. I'm fighting like when I was a lightweight. God gave me speed. He gave me movement. My movement is better than De La Hoya's. My hands are faster than De La Hoya's. That's what I have to use.''

Even before the back-to-back losses to Forrest it seemed like Mosley more and more was abandoning the slick boxing skills that had been his trademark in favor of trying to sit down on his punches and go for knockouts. Against lesser challengers he was able to do this successfully but the further he drifted away from who he really was the harder things became and the more disappointing his performances seemed to became.

Now Mosley believes he is back to the style that baffled De La Hoya in the second half of their fight and he remains confident not only that he will carry the night but also that his critics will find some way to diminish what he accomplishes when it's all over.

"People say a lot of different things,'' Mosley said, with more than a little bitterness clearly in his voice. "I just look at this fight as a way to let the people know I'm still here. I know if I win some people will downplay my victory. They'll say I just have his number but I at this point I don't car what's on Oscar's mind, I don't care what's on Bob Arum's mind and I don't care what's on the critics' mind. What's important is what's on my mind and that's winning.

"I was surprised at what some people wrote and said after I lost but people are cruel I guess. There was a lot of garbage out there about me and my father. I don't read a lot of it. If I read a few words and it's crap I stop reading. It's not good for me. There are a lot of people writing their own feelings, not what my feelings were.

"I have to forget all that. I just need to go out and remind people of stuff they seem to have forgotten about.''

That stuff is all about his movement, his hand speed, his agility, the quickness of his combinations and his ability to land punches in bunches that disarm and, eventually, destroy an opponent. That is his plan against De La Hoya. It is a plan based not on power but on the most dangerous thing in boxing. It is a plan based on speed. Based, frankly, on what got him here.

"This will definitely be a fast-paced fight,'' Mosley said. "He won't be able to pick away at me like he did with (Fernando) Vargas and Yory Boy (Campas). I'm too quick for that. Boxing is about styles and I have a style where I can go forward or backwards and do well. I can do a lot of different things. I won't just walk into the slaughterhouse like they did. That's not Sugar Shane.''

Many of his critics have been saying they haven't seen Sugar Shane in a while. Not since that night he first defeated De La Hoya in fact. On Sept. 13 they will be waiting at ringside to see if he is back. Shane Mosley doesn't plan on disappointing them.

"We'll see what they say after this fight,'' Mosley said. "Oscar is a great fighter. He was a great fighter before I beat him the first time and he'll be a great fighter after I beat him again. But he can't do what I can do.''