BIG BEAR LAKE, Calif. — Sugar Shane Mosley sits upstairs in the man cave at his training compound, the one with a massage table in the corner and a hot tub on the deck.
At 38 years old, he is the last of the 1992 Olympians still boxing. Yet Mosley continues to venture inside boxing rings to affirm and enhance the subject for which he cares most deeply: his legacy, as a Sugar, as a boxer, as, he hopes, an all-time great.
“People that follow boxing know that I’m a maniac,” Mosley said. “The ones that don’t say I’m old and slow, I’m this and that. All this stup-id-ness.”
He spit out that last word like a piece of rotten food. Gone was the smile that defines him, replaced with a nervous laugh.
“They look past greatness,” he continued. “I’m a legendary fighter. I’ve been battling for years. Battling. And battling. It doesn’t sit right with me, being on the back end.”
He leaned forward, his body shaking as if on vibrate, his penetrating blue eyes filled with anger, frustration, disbelief.
“I have another idea,” he said, voice rising. “This here is the year of the monkey wrench. Write me off. I’m throwing a wrench in everybody’s plans.”
Mosley (46-5 with 39 knockouts), not Manny Pacquiao, will meet Floyd Mayweather Jr. (40-0 with 25 knockouts) on Saturday night in a welterweight fight in Las Vegas. He will showcase that misleading smile, a toothy grin framed by a thin mustache.
His trainer, Naazim Richardson, said he believed all great fighters possess deceiving qualities, from Muhammad Ali (unassuming heavyweight) to Oscar De La Hoya (tougher than he looked) to Mayweather himself (trash talk overshadows talent).
“And Shane Mosley is misleading,” Richardson said. “You look at that smile, that little kid smile, looking like he wants to sell you insurance or something. There’s this sweet quality about him. You forget he’s ferocious in the ring.”
Mosley’s father, Jack, implored his son to boast more, reasoning that “the mouth that stays closed never gets fed.” But that has never been Mosley’s style.
He trains here, flanked by his best friend and his 19-year-old son, surrounded by those he calls the Tribe. The main house is downright quaint, with paintings of bald eagles and snowmen figurines and a sign that reads, “Sugar Shane’s Chalet.” On Tuesday nights he heads to the nearby Bowling Barn, where locals grumble about flash photography and Mosley rolls under the tag name SUG.
All this makes for a humble, peaceful existence by boxing standards, but it also fans an internal struggle between who Mosley wants to be and how he wants to be remembered. He desires his place in boxing history and will discuss it when prompted (as for this article), but refuses to campaign actively.
“I’m not going to run my mouth just to run it,” he said. “That’s just talking. When I say something, you know I mean it.”
Mosley first considered his legacy at age 10, when he announced that one day he would become world champion. He never considered another plan.
He met his best friend, Hassan AbdulRahim Jr., in high school in Pomona, Calif., and they drove around in a green Volkswagen Beetle they once rebuilt in mechanics class. Most days ended at a park, with legacy the favorite topic.
Mosley struck his friend as calm, collected and obsessed with a singular pursuit. Boxers love that about him, even now. De La Hoya described Mosley as “the fighter that every fighter loves,” a throwback who sent his trainer pictures of an impromptu sparring session — held on his vacation in Bolivia.
For Mosley, boxing holds oxygen’s importance. If he spends more than a week outside the ring, he feels nasty, caged. He paces hotel rooms, or knocks out push-ups, plays basketball, tennis and soccer, or snowboards, anything to fill the void.
His grandfather remains spry at 91. His father still hits heavy bags at 65. Mosley always exuded the family energy, even in nursery school, when he tooled around on a Big Wheel while his classmates napped.
“I remember when we first started training, and I said, ‘This boxing is going to wear him out,’ ” Jack Mosley said. “Never did. Even to this day, it never does.”
Mosley faced doubts from the beginning, fighting for $1,000 here and there, knocking out all but one of his first 23 opponents. He won his first 38 fights, mostly at lightweight, and compiled a knockout ratio among the highest ever.
He chased the two famed Sugars who came before. Among his prized possessions, Mosley keeps a photograph of himself and Sugar Ray Robinson, often considered the greatest boxer of all. Mosley befriended Sugar Ray Leonard, too.
“I wanted to be like them, to show the difference between real fighters and fake ones,” Mosley said. “That’s the era that I’m from, the era that I fought in, the era that I watched. You fight the best and everything else follows.”
Not exactly. Mosley beat De La Hoya in 2000 and destroyed Antonio Margarito in his last fight, which many had considered a retirement party, in January 2009. Leonard called after the Margarito bout and told Mosley he represented their nickname perfectly.
That win announced Mosley’s return to boxing’s consciousness. But what happened between De La Hoya and Margarito nearly derailed his career.
The first defeat came in 2002, against Vernon Forrest, and over the next five years Mosley lost nearly as often as he won. Each beating came against a bigger fighter, and as recently as two years ago, promoters told his security guard to begin searching for another job.
AbdulRahim said Mosley fights best when happy, and he sees more than coincidence that Mosley’s life and career fell apart at the same time.
Victor Conte, the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative founder, accused Mosley of using performance-enhancing drugs
in 2003 and recently released portions of Mosley’s court testimony. Mosley said under oath that he unknowingly used performance-enhancing drugs. Mosley is suing Conte for defamation, but while he agreed to Olympic-style blood testing for this bout and mostly shrugged off the subject of steroids, it obviously bothers him. On a recent conference call, he said, “It’s ridiculous that the media wants to make me the poster boy for steroids.”
Beyond that, Mosley endured a brutal and public separation from his wife and business manager (they married in 2002 and are getting a divorce). Friends used the word “toxic” to describe the union.
“He’s in a different place now, a good place,” said LaDainian Tomlinson, a Jets running back and Mosley’s friend. “This is where Shane can cement his legacy forever, as the first person to beat Floyd Mayweather.”
De La Hoya said Mosley could retire ranked among the greatest fighters of his era, but “he does have to beat a Mayweather and beat a Pacquiao to be considered that.” Richardson, his trainer, called this fight the most important of Mosley’s career.
Mosley’s camp remains confident in its preparations, so much so that the first hour of training is off limits, even to HBO’s cameras. Privately, they laugh off the underdog label, with Richardson reminding skeptics that few picked Butler to advance to the N.C.A.A. championship game.
“He wants to remind people who he is,” AbdulRahim said. “He feels like, because of the hype, boxing took this guy from the Philippines and this guy, who wasn’t really much of a champion, to tell you the truth, and placed them in his spot. Shane is the one who should be pushed and hyped and put on this pedestal. He will prove that.”
Should Mosley upset Mayweather, he could aim for a rematch or fight Pacquiao, the Filipino who has won world titles in seven weight divisions. But one day, next year or five years from now, the emphasis on legacy will shift toward Shane Jr., the next fighter in the Mosley line.
They train together here, inside the garage Mosley transformed into a puncher’s paradise. Richardson bestowed the boy with his own nickname: Spice.
“Don’t forget about Little Shane,” Mosley told friends recently. “My baby boy is next.”
With that, Mosley went back inside his gym, where his son needed instruction and his legacy needed polishing. He had typical, understated plans on this recent Tuesday: an evening with the locals, at the big, red bowling barn for league night.
Source: nytimes.com
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