"JACK'S BACK!"

June 29, 2006 - by Nat Gottlieb

Imagine for a moment you're a big honcho movie producer. A trusted friend hands you a film proposal:

"Jack's Back" by Shane Mosley

Plot Summary:

A hard-working father who boxes just to keep his weight down, discovers that his teenage son, who follows him constantly to the gym, has a gift for fighting. Devoting his life to the son, the father trains him from a precocious teenage phenomenon and amateur champion to an unbeaten professional world champion. Eventually, the son achieves status as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world and life seems perfect.

But then the son suffers a fall from grace. He loses three of his next four fights, sees the bright lights shift onto other boxers and is called washed up at age 32.

Convinced his father has become distracted by outside interests, the son fires him. Father and son remain close, but there are new faces in the boxer's corner for his next four fights. Hurt, angry, but too classy to let his feelings out, the father watches his son's career for the first time as a fan. He feels exiled.

And then fate intervenes. For his next fight, the son's new trainer is committed to another boxer. He phones his father and asks a simple question, albeit one laden with complex feelings and issues: "Will you train me again, Dad?"

You finish reading the proposal and ask the natural question: "So how does it end?"

That's exactly what boxing fans will find out Saturday night when Shane Mosley (42-4, 36 KOs) and his father Jack reunite in the ring for the first time in nearly two years to face Fernando Vargas (26-3, 22 KOs), live on HBO "Pay-Per-View" from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Fittingly, this fight is a rematch. Not just with Vargas -- who lost to Shane in February on a 10th round TKO -- but between father and son. Two strong-willed individuals, highly talented, both hoping they can beat the odds that have destroyed other father-son boxing teams.

How did it come to this? Backtrack a bit. It's March of 2004. Shane has just lost to Winky Wright, his third defeat in four bouts. Shane makes a shocking announcement: he is letting his father go. Nearly two years later, Shane revisits that moment without pulling any punches.

"He wasn't motivated at the time we broke up," Shane said. "He had these distractions. He is a big fan of music, and was torn between the two. He still feels today that he was taking care of the boxing back then, but he really wasn't."

Whether or not Jack was taking care of Shane's business, only the two of them know, but one thing is irrefutable: dad did have outside distractions, including his own music label, various real estate ventures and the training of light heavyweight contender, Paul Briggs.

That was then, this is now, is how easy-going Shane views things. And right now he is excited about the difference in his father. "He is really focused again," Shane said. "He's more hungry than he had been when we broke up. He wants to show the world he's still the best trainer out there."

Unlike Shane, who finds it easy to talk about himself, Jack Mosley is a private man who does not air many feelings in public. When asked was there any tension between him and Shane when camp first started, Jack brushed off the notion.

"There was nothing about imposing wills, or a clash of personalities," Jack said. "We just looked at it (training) as we had a project to get done, made a plan and started doing it."

And while Shane feels his father is out to prove something in this fight, Jack rejects that idea, too.

"Shane is a five-time world champion in three different weight classes and I was part of that," Jack said. "I don't care what people think. I already know what I did. I started Shane from scratch. How many trainers can say they started a fighter from scratch and gotten those accomplishments. I know what I did, and I don't need anybody to tell me."

Again, that was then, this is now. The overriding question, the one whose answer might well determine who wins Saturday's fight, is: can Jack, whose last victory with his son was almost three years ago, get Shane "back to the future." It is an important question, because while Shane won the first fight, Vargas was slightly ahead on two judges cards before a badly swollen eye caused the bout to be stopped.

Probably the answer to the question lies in the primary goal Jack set at the start of camp. Jack wanted to turn back the clock to a time when Shane, in tremendous shape, was able to execute his highly-demanding "power-boxing" method. It is a style, Jack says, that was missing in the first fight with Vargas.

"Shane could have done a lot better against Vargas," Jack said. "Right now, he's a least twice as good as he was then. I'm training him to do the same things he did when he was younger, and he still can do them. You will see it in the ring."

Shane's favorite sparring partner, middleweight contender Enrique Ornelas, agrees with Jack.

"Before the first Vargas fight, I think because he had those losses (Wright twice, Vernon Forrest twice), he was not mentally letting them go," said Ornelas (24-2). "He was iffy about fighting Vargas the first time. But after he won, I saw he was more relaxed, more confident. Training with Jack, he has this attitude now, it's just another fight."

While skeptical at first about his ability to "power-box" again, seeing is believing. And Shane likes what he sees.

"Yeh, I wondered if I could still fight that way," Shane said. "Now that I've gone through all these strenuous workouts, I'd have to agree with my father. I can do stuff that I did when I was younger."

What exactly is "power-boxing?" This is the way Jack tells it: "They call some guys boxer-punchers. I train Shane to punch and box at the same time -- and at a high rate of energy. If a worker on the streets takes a jackhammer and hits it against the ground a few times, the street isn't going to give. But if you hit the street the same time with the same intensity, over and over, eventually the street's going to give and that's what power-boxing is all about."

His son agrees, but says Jack's eagerness to re-install the jackhammer made him worry at times he would get over-trained and leave his fight in the camp. "He's working very hard. Sometimes I have to pull him back, he's so excited. I want to be careful not to overdue things. I'm in great shape now, and eager to show off all this good stuff we've been working on," Shane said.

So is Jack, who all but said Vargas won't know what hit him come Saturday night.

"Shane is looking very sharp," Jack said. "He's working the jab again and throwing combinations. He (Vargas) will come out like he did last time, and that will not be enough. Shane understands what I'm doing with him, but Vargas won't understand until fight night. And by then, it will be too late. We are getting back to those things that we used to do and that he had gotten away from doing."

When a fighter gets away from what he should be doing, it is the trainer's job to get him back on track, which apparently Jack didn't. After two losses to Forrest and the first one to Wright, Shane felt justified in putting some of the blame on his dad, and fired the only trainer he had ever known. It was not an easy decision for Shane, an emotional, caring person who loves his father as much as Jack loves him.

It was also a decision complicated by the nature of Shane's personality. Easy going, ready with a sincere smile, Shane, as HBO commentator Larry Merchant says, "is one of the good guys -- and as great an athlete as we've (HBO) ever dealt with."

On both accounts, personality and talent, Jack played a major role.

"I taught Shane values," Jack said. "Shane is a nice person, he listens, he's not disrespectful. I raised him to use his mind and he's a fine citizen. All the rest (boxing titles) is just icing on the cake."

Clearly, Jack sees himself as a father first and a trainer second. "When I look back and see I have raised a child to be a good citizen, that is a tremendous feat," Jack said. "Great athletes are born every day. You as a father don't want yours to become a bad-ass. You never see Shane putting down another fighter. I raised him different. I always told him that all the trophies are great, but what is important is what kind of person you are."

The one time Shane was pushed into trying trash talk, he failed miserably. Making his third lightweight title defense against Juan Molina in May of 1998, Shane manhandled the former junior lightweight champion, pounding him unmercifully en route to an 8th round TKO on "Boxing After Dark." When the referee raised Shane's hand, his then promoter, Cedric Kushner, did what promoters do and jumped into the ring to seize the moment.

With one arm draped around Shane, Kushner whispered to his boxer: Tell them, "I'm not afraid of Stevie Johnston (then WBC lightweight champion). When his ring interview began, Shane puffed out his lips, scowled and stared straight at the camera, saying, "For all the other lightweights out there who think they can take me on - Stevie Johnson and Orzubek Nazarov (then WBA champ) - I'm right here."

Almost immediately, Shane cracked up, broke into a high-pitched, staccato laugh, and said, "You know, I like Stevie Johnston."

Merchant, who has done countless interviews with Shane, feels he has a good grasp of what makes the boxer tick. "Shane is sort of an innocent who let his father impose himself, and kept going, seemingly oblivious because he loves what he does and has very high expectations of himself," Merchant said.

Immersing himself totally in boxing has always been the way for a kid who started out at the Los Angeles Boxing Club at age 13, and became something of an instant legend because of his advanced skills. A story has made the rounds that the 13-year-old Shane went across town to fight another young prodigy, Oscar De La Hoya – whom he would later beat twice as a pro. As the popular story goes, Shane pummeled Oscar and won a unanimous decision. Like many tales surrounding great boxers, Merchant is amused, but says it aint so.

"I have actually seen hand-held footage of that Shane-Oscar fight when they were young teenagers," Merchant said. "Shane did not kick his butt. He moved a lot and seemed to have a little the better of it."

What was not embellished was the fact that at age 15, Shane was being asked to spar with champions such as Julio Cesar Chavez, Azumah Nelson and Zach Padilla."

"The stories of Shane sparring with pros when he was an amateur are legion and legend in L.A. gyms," Merchant said. "Oscar shot ahead of him as a pro (only) because of the (Olympic) gold medal."

Not making the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona came as a stunning blow to Shane -- and to everyone who had watched his remarkable amateur career (230-12). Ironically, Shane would be denied a spot on the team by losing to Forrest, the same fighter who later would hand him his first professional loss.

Shane was 38-0 and a world champion when Forrest parlayed a concussion-causing head-butt in the second round in January of 2002 into the only knockdown Shane has ever suffered in his career. When a grazing left hook and a hard right hand to the temple put Shane on the canvas, it was the first time he had been put down in a remarkable amateur-pro career encompassing 280 fights at that point.

Like his first pro defeat, losing to Forrest back in their Olympics pre-trial match also had important repercussions for the young boxer. Missing the Olympics, as Merchant said, slowed Shane's pro career pace to a crawl. Instead of coming out of Barcelona with promoters tripping over each other to sign him as De La Hoya did, Shane wound up initially with a local promoter, Patrick Ortiz, who either didn't have the juice or the desire to get his multi-talented boxer started on the path he was destined for.

In 1993 and 1994, for example, Ortiz kept Shane busy with 16 bouts, all in California, none against elite competition, only one televised. Shane sometimes made as little as $2,500 for a fight.

Those depressing moments of his early career would leave a lasting impression on Shane. Even when he later defended the lightweight title he had won from Philip Holiday in 1997 eight straight times, all by knockout, he never seemed to garner the respect and adulation De La Hoya did, who was fighting at the more glamorous welterweight level.

Undoubtedly this played a role in Shane's decision to jump a weight class and go directly to welterweight. Even though he would earn a split decision victory over De La Hoya in just his third fight at welterweight, and later beat him again in a rematch at junior middleweight, Mosley never was the dominant, overpowering fighter he was as a lightweight. The punch simply wasn't there.

Crunch the numbers: as a lightweight, Shane was 32-0 with 30 knockouts. At welterweight, Shane's record is 8-2 with five knockouts. At junior middleweight, he is just 2-2 with one knockout (Vargas). Shane's combined record after leaving lightweight is 10-4 with only six knockouts. The TKO of Vargas was Shane's first stoppage in four years and seven months.

After Saturday's fight, plans are for Shane to move back down to welterweight, a division packed with good, name-brand fighters. Should Jack's power-boxing regime work against Vargas, Shane could experience a rebirth, still young at 34 because of having lived a clean life and always staying in shape. A mega-match with Floyd Mayweather Jr., for example, would be one of the biggest fights in years.

As for Jack, the son of an aerospace union rep, he will come away from this fight -- win, lose or draw -- proud of himself and his son.

"All the material wealth you get as a fighter, all the accolades, when your career is over, you still have a life to live," Jack said. "If you've lived your career by seeking out the limelight, then it's hard after you're done. I always taught Shane not to want people to like him for what he's doing -- for being a champ --but instead for who he is."

Asked, when Shane's career was over, what one moment he would remember most, Jack Mosley, the hard-driven, ambitious trainer, stepped out of the box.

"Shane was four, and we went to the see the "Wizard of Oz" at the theater," Jack said. "It was packed. Everybody was real quiet and then all of a sudden Shane says out loud, 'Oooh, there's the Tin Woodsman.' I think that moment stands out because he was so innocent."

It was an innocence that would be tested in the worst kind of arena, one where father and son would be under enormous pressure to succeed, where every move was put under a microscope -- as it is now -- and only one verdict would satisfy his fans: victory.

No matter what happens Saturday, Shane will emerge from the ring having regained a closeness with his father he had briefly lost. In the world outside the ropes, that's a victory on everyone's score card.