Shane Mosley, attorney Judd Burstein use video to fight back against BALCO founder Victor Conte -- New York Daily News

By Teri Thompson and Nathaniel Vinton, New York Daily News

A 360-degree roundhouse punch is an interesting thing to see.

Attempting to turn the tables on BALCO founder Victor Conte in a nasty legal fight, attorney Judd Burstein has posted a YouTube video of his own client, boxer Shane Mosley, admitting under oath last year to knowingly using performance-enhancing drug erythropoietin, or EPO, in advance of a 2003 fight against Oscar De La Hoya.

It's a curious move, given that Burstein oversees Mosley's $12 million defamation complaint against Conte, in which he claims Conte lied when he told reporters in 2008 that Mosley knew precisely what he was getting when he bought $1,850 worth of steroids and EPO from BALCO.

First Mosley claims a grand juror informed him he took EPO, but then he is pressed as to whether he knew before that he was taking EPO.

"Is it your testimony that you didn't know you were taking EPO until the grand jury told you you were taking EPO?" asks Conte's attorney, Tom Harvey.

"I didn't know what it was, like, that it was basically wrong to actually take whatever it was," Mosley says, then shrugs, thinks, mumbles, and reconsiders the question. "I must of had to known I was taking EPO. I guess I had to have."

Burstein, who first brought the complaint in April of 2008, posted the two videos on YouTube and entitled them "Shane Mosley on EPO - The Truth." He says the new clips bring more context to his client's previous video EPO admission, which Conte posted on YouTube on Thursday after a failed settlement conference in Manhattan.

In the new clips Harvey asks Mosley if he knew the substance he was injecting was EPO prior to his 2003 appearance before the grand jury investigating Conte's BALCO doping ring.

"If I recall, I told the grand jury I was taking EPO, but they informed me to what, you know, what it was, whatever, I recall telling them that," Mosley said.

"But prior to going to the grand jury you knew you were taking EPO, right," asks Harvey.

"Yeah," says Mosley.

The declaration would seem to undercut the entire basis of Mosley's lawsuit, which claims Conte libeled Mosley in 2008 when he told the Daily News that Mosley "knew precisely what (he was) using" and that "it was all explained up front and there was no deception."

Burstein has promised to post the rest of the depositions online. He also promised to get revenge on the Daily News reporter who wrote about the first video, which Conte released on YouTube after the failed and hostile settlement conference.

"Nate, there will come a day when I have an opportunity to do serious harm to your career," Burstein wrote in an e-mail. "You may not know at the time that it was me, but when you end up with your job lost and reputation destroyed, I (will) call to tell you it was me."

As in his testimony before the BALCO grand jury in 2003, Mosley was asked in the deposition about a trip he took that summer from Los Angeles to BALCO's office in Burlingame, Calif. with his then-trainer Darryl Hudson. At that meeting, Mosley bought $1,850 of steroids and EPO, and was taught how to inject EPO in his abdomen.

A transcription of another section of the deposition – not yet posted online, but reviewed by the Daily News, has Mosley again making an admission that seems to torpedo his own claim that Conte never explained what the drugs were.

HARVEY: "Who explained what the EPO was?"

MOSLEY: "Victor Conte."

HARVEY: "And who did he explain what the EPO was, who was his audience?"

MOSLEY: "Myself, Darryl Hudson, and –"

HARVEY: "This third gentleman?"

MOSLEY: "The third gentleman."

The third gentleman would be Conte's BALCO partner, James Valente. Mosley then testifies that Conte explained to Hudson and Mosley that EPO injections could be dangerous.

Leaving New York after the failed settlement talks, Conte made note of those other witnesses.

"What Shane Mosley seems to have forgotten," Conte says, "is that there were three eye-witnesses in the room with him while he was knowingly injecting performance-enhancing substances."

Source: nydailynews.com