By BERNARD FERNANDEZ, Philadelphia Daily News
Some fighters go into bouts toting a certain amount of baggage. For Saturday night's pay-per-view welterweight extravaganza with Floyd Mayweather Jr., "Sugar" Shane Mosley appears to be traveling heavier than Elizabeth Taylor on an around-the-world cruise.
Where to begin rummaging around in that humongous steamer trunk of out-of-the-ring intrigue? Would it be Mosley's prior acknowledgment of the use of performance-enhancing drugs, a matter that just won't go away? Although Mosley has acquiesced to Mayweather's demand that both fighters submit to more rigid testing by the United States Anti-Doping Agency, the fact that he is suing Victor Conte, former head of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative, who he claims "tricked" him into unwittingly using PEDs, has sparked dueling lawsuits in which the fighter and the convicted felon have accused each other of making defamatory statements about the other.
If that elephant-sized issue weren't enough, there's Mosley's lavish praise of his relatively new trainer, North Philadelphia's Brother Naazim Richardson, seemingly at the expense of his father and longtime former trainer, Jack Mosley. Oh, and let's not forget his bitter impending divorce from his wife, Jin, the mother of the couple's three children, whom Mosley has depicted as a gold-digging opportunist who sought to bail when she thought her millionaire husband's boxing career had taken a downward turn.
Sprinkle in the ingredients of advanced boxing age (Mosley is 38, 5 years older than Mayweather), ring rust (this will be his first fight in 15-plus months) and the curious decision to suddenly have his previously uninked body adorned by a shoulder-to-wrist tattoo on his left arm, and it almost appears as if his long-awaited showdown with Mayweather is merely an undercard affair to other tumultuous affairs going on in the Pomona, Calif., native's life.
Yet Mosley (46-5, 39 KOs), a 9-2 underdog, professes to be more serene and at peace with himself than ever as the days wind down to his date with destiny against Mayweather (40-0, 25 KOs) at Las Vegas' MGM Grand, one of the most consequential welterweight matchups in recent memory, even if Mosley's WBA championship belt is not officially on the line.
"I'm more relaxed and focused than I've been in I don't know how long," Mosley said recently at his training camp in the mountains of Big Bear, Calif., an assertion that Richardson, best known for his work with Bernard "The Executioner" Hopkins, vouches for.
"Shane has put everything else out of his mind and is locked in on Floyd," Richardson insisted. "I don't see where he's distracted at all."
But while Mosley and his support crew are steadfast in their pronouncements that the actual fight is not just their main concern, but their only one, the future Hall of Famer has been obliged to address other matters as frequently as he's had to discuss Mayweather.
Take his December 2003 grand-jury testimony that he did, in fact, use two now-infamous PEDs, the "clear" and the "cream," as well as the blood-boosting drug Erythropoietin, before his winning rematch with Oscar De La Hoya on Sept. 13 of that year. In an effort to bolster his claim that Mosley was not the innocent dupe he has depicted himself as, Conte released an edited YouTube video of a deposition Mosley gave in the $12 million defamation suit Mosley filed against Conte in 2008.
"Prior to going to the grand jury, you knew you were taking EPO? Yes or no?" asked Tom Harvey, Conte's lawyer.
"Yes," Mosley replied.
Judd Burstein, Mosley's high-profile lawyer who has never been known for his tact, responded as if he relished getting Conte before a judge and jury as much as his client wanted to take his shots at Mayweather in the ring.
"Half of me is disappointed that I can't just put all this behind for Shane," Burstein said. "But on the other hand, destroying Mr. Conte in a courtroom is something I would almost pay to do."
What about Mosley's strained relationship with his father, who was named Trainer of the Year for 1998 by the Boxing Writers Association of America primarily for his work with his son?
"Naazim has prepared me all different ways to fight," said Mosley, who upset Antonio Margarito on a ninth-round stoppage on Jan. 24, 2009, his only previous bout with Richardson as his chief second. "He's 100 percent in the game. I'm fighting and he's fighting, as well. He's not fighting with his fists and hands, but he's fighting with his mind."
If that sound like a veiled shot at the father who has been banished from Mosley's corner, it sounds that way to Jack Mosley, too.
"Shane's already been trained," Jack Mosley said of Richardson's influence. "Shane already knows how to fight. I trained him from age 8 up until now, and that's 30 years. If Shane doesn't know how to fight now, he never will. I don't think anybody could train him how to fight any different."
Of his wife, who could get half of his earnings during their 7 1/2 years together because of California's community property divorce laws, Mosley told the Los Angeles Times: "Anything Mayweather says is nothing compared to the things she said to me. Look at the time line. [The 2008 separation came] when I was losing. When I was ready to retire. When people said I was washed up."
fernanb@phillynews.com
Source: philly.com
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