ONE FUTURE, ONE PAST

June 29, 2006 - by Ron Borges

Shane Mosley remembered the past and Fernando Vargas forgot it. That, among other things, is why Mosley still has a future in boxing while Vargas has only memories now.

As Mosley stalked Vargas through nearly six rounds at the MGM Grand Garden Arena last Saturday night he was waiting for what he knew was sure to come. He was convinced that at some point Vargas would give him the same opening he'd given Oscar De La Hoya four years ago. He knew he'd venture in too close, miss with a sloppy right hand while trying to counter a jab and then it would be there. Vargas' past and Mosley's future.

"I remember watching Oscar throw that perfect left hook against Vargas,'' Mosley recalled not long after he'd landed an even more perfect one that rendered Vargas defenseless and decomposing, his mind unraveling as he collapsed to the floor on his back late in the sixth round of a rematch that seemed to settle any scores still left between them.

"When I was dancing around I saw the (same) opportunity. I threw my jab and took a half step back and he came in and missed with his right and I threw that perfect left hook again.''

Vargas never saw it until he watched it on replay from his corner, where he was led not long after he'd struggled to get up but tipped over twice onto one shoulder before somehow lifting his body off the canvas. His mind did not come with him however and Mosley jumped all over him, landing three more unseen punches before referee Kenny Bayless stopped the beating at 2:38 of what should probably be the final round Fernando Vargas ever fights.

In February, when a different referee, Joe Cortez, stepped between him and Mosley and stopped their fight with Vargas' left eye so swollen he could not even see shadows let alone punches, the two-time junior middleweight champion loudly protested. For the next five months he insisted he was coming on, which he was, and would have worn Mosley out and won what was a very close fight in the final two rounds had Cortez let him.

Saturday there was no such protest.

Not when Bayless first draped his protective arms around him. Not when he gently led him back to the safety of his corner, his head spinning and his body slack. Not even an hour or so later, when it's often excuse time in boxing. Not even then, safe from anymore assaults and supported by his family and supporters, did Vargas try to lessen the force of what Mosley had done to him.

"I never saw the punch,'' Vargas admitted. "I can't take anything away from his performance. He caught me with a good shot. I don't know what I'll do next. I got a big date Aug. 5 (when he will marry his long-time girlfriend and the mother of his two children). That's the only date I'm focusing on.''

The same could not be said for Mosley, who at nearly 35 was almost seven years older than Vargas but who fought like he was 10 years younger.

While Vargas must ponder a fistic future with few options and little chance of ever again achieving what he once had known, Mosley understood that his back-to-back stoppages of Vargas had opened doors for him at both 147 pounds and 154, depending on what he chooses to do.

Boxing is a sport of ebbs and flows and the same is true of a fighter's career. Barely six months ago, Mosley appeared to be what Vargas now so clearly is. He seemed a fighter well past his prime with few good options available to him even though he had signed on with De La Hoya's powerful promotional company. But 4 1/2 years after his last knockout, Mosley crushed Vargas in a way only De La Hoya and Feliz Trinidad had ever done and from that flowed not only victory but the outgrowth of victory - opportunity.

"You never know what will happen,'' Mosley (43-4, 37 KO) said after having first indicated he intended to move down to 147 pounds rather than continue to face naturally bigger men at 154. "I think I can get back down to welterweight. If not, there's always catch weights, like 150, 152.

"I'll take some time off and begin training again in November. (WBO welterweight champion Antonio) Margarito is out there waiting for Floyd (Mayweather). They should fight each other and I could fight the winner next year. Right now my tooth is loose so I may have to go to the dentist. I got to see what's up with that first.''

Even while Mosley was talking, promoter Don King was on the phone with De La Hoya suggesting the man who beat him twice and whose career he now promotes step in with newly crowned 154-pound champion Cory Spinks, who once briefly also held the welterweight title. Spinks is the kind of slick moving, light hitting challenge Mosley might be willing to accept at 154 because he is neither a heavy-handed opponent nor a naturally bigger man, as Vargas and most junior middleweights are for Mosley. Money more than anything else would dictate where, if anywhere, Spinks might fit into Mosley's future however because Vargas' emphatic conqueror now is a man with options.

He could choose to wait on Mayweather and face him if De La Hoya doesn't get to him first next May, when he's expected to return to boxing for his last hurrah. De La Hoya could end up simply retiring off his recent demolishment of Ricardo Mayorga instead and call it a career without regret, having won world titles in six weight classes and set records for pay-per-view sales few fighters are likely to challenge. He has no need of Mayweather, to be honest, but that doesn't mean he won't feel compelled to face him.

Whatever he decides will impact Mosley but it will not leave the latter without other avenues to trod. Those are there for him now because this victory was more one-sided and ended more emphatically than his first confrontation with Vargas and in boxing it is abrupt endings elevate the man who survives them. While one could debate what might have happened in the first fight, all one could debate about Mosley's second victory in five months was whether or not it was a sign for Vargas that it is time to retire.

Immediately after the fight, back in the stunned quiet of his dressing room, Vargas told friends "I can't go out like that.'' Perhaps not but his plan to move up and face bigger and far heavier punchers than Mosley in the middleweight division seems a course of action fraught with other nights at some point just like the ones with Trinidad, De La Hoya and Mosley. Concussive nights in which his mind ultimately goes blank. Perhaps even worse nights than their predecessors because for the first time he looked sluggish throughout a fight, his legs stiff, his head unable to get out of the way of the jab, his body surrendering to an assault on the inside that reversed what had been part of his own victory plan. He fought, for hopefully the last time, like an old man.

"He was doing something different this fight by staying real low so that is when I started dancing and throwing more jabs,'' Mosley explained.

"I think he was weaker this fight. He looked like he was breaking down. I knew he was having trouble making the weight so I knew if I hit him with body shots he'd break down faster.''

Indeed he did. Vargas (26-4, 22 KO) was never able to close the distance as he had hoped to and he seldom jabbed his way inside, instead abandoning just about everything he and trainer Danny Smith had worked on.

In the end, all he had left was the warrior's heart that had led him through so many other fires earlier in his career but on this night he seemed to be the oldest 28-year-old warrior in Nevada, a fighter perhaps permanently altered by all the battles he had won and most of all by the four he lost in such violent fashion to Trinidad, De La Hoya and Mosley.

Weeks before the fight Smith had conceded that those fights and more successful ones he'd won against formidable challengers like Winky Wright and Ike Quartey had taken their toll, chipping away pieces of Vargas that could not be replaced by time and relaxation. Boxing is a corrosive sport that eats away at a man until one day he finds himself suddenly a shadow of what he once had been. The outside may look the same but internally things are missing. That was the Fernando Vargas Smith found in the ring in front of him on July 15.

"He was too slow,'' Smith said. "I don't know if it was (making) the weight or what but he wasn't able to utilize the jab or move his head. It seemed like as his weight came down he got less sharp. He's had a lot of wars. Those wars he had take a toll on you.''

Three weeks earlier Smith had eluded to the same problem when he said, "I don't think he'll ever be (the Fernando of old) because when you're in those types of fights that he was in and take punishment like he's taken it's great he can come back...and not be shot. He's not shot but he's not the same guy of old.''

Smith went on to insist that despite his fighter's diminished capacity he would perform well against Mosley because "he is not a real big guy. Fernando can really put a lot of pressure on a guy like that and be comfortable.''

Nothing could have ended up further from the truth. Vargas never seemed comfortable and by the fifth round his face revealed a wary man trying more to avoid what he feared was coming than to seek confrontation.

By the time things ended the exercise had become so lopsided none of the judges had given Vargas even a single round. Nor should they.

He may have won one if you were kind but the boxing arena is not a place for kindness. It is a harsh landscape where basic truths are revealed and fatal flaws exposed. In Vargas' case, it was a place that made the harsh words of Richard Schaeffer, the president of Golden Boy Promotions, echo throughout the vast hall long after the fight was over.

Several weeks ago Schaeffer had been listening on a conference call as Vargas minimized what Mosley had done to him in their first meeting, claiming his eye was closed by a headbutt not from of the string of right hands Mosley had bounced off his head all fight long. When Vargas was finished talking it was Mosley's turn but Schaeffer stepped in and defended his company's fighter, saying something that sounded, in retrospect, like a fittingly sad epitaph for Fernando Vargas' career.

"If he loses this fight what was he?'' Schaeffer said mockingly. "A guy who sold a lot of tickets.'

Vargas always did that far more successfully than Mosley and while that has left him with money in the bank and growing real estate and business holdings which should sustain him and his family, what he doesn't have is what Mosley still does - a future in big-time boxing. Vargas had insisted before the fight that while Mosley was fighting only for money he was fighting for "redemption.'' If he was, he failed to get it. Instead he got the kind of loss that, when coupled with his others, left him saddled with the same fate that befell a far better fighter named Thomas Hearns. In their biggest moments both men always came up short and in Vargas' case never more so than on Saturday night when, for the first time in his career, he was not competitive for a single minute.

That made this defeat far more significant for both men. It uplifted Mosley's career at a time when his future was still in question and it flatlined Vargas' because this was not merely a fight with a devastating ending. It was the kind of one-sided beating you cannot deny in the dark hours after midnight, when you are finally alone with boxing's harsh realities, your sycophants and money men having all gone home.

One day Shane Mosley may face the same realities. Most fighters do.

But Saturday night was his night and so he could be gracious when it was over, uplifting Vargas' spirits just as he had an hour earlier broken them.

When Vargas approached him at the post-fight podium and hugged Mosley before leaving Mosley silenced the audience when he said, "That's a true warrior right there. A true warrior.''

Fernando Vargas did not look back as Mosley spoke. There was no final wave. He simply slipped out a side door with his family and entourage behind him into an uncertain future in a trade he had plied since he was a young boy with dreams, fire and little else. Behind him, television lights still shone on Shane Mosley, a warrior too, who had not yet met the end all warriors face. The end Fernando Vargas saw Saturday night when the lights went out and he was on the floor, blinded by a punch he never saw.