Shane Mosley?s Odyssey

By Thomas Hauser

Special to TopRank.com

Editor’s Note: This is the first article in a four-part series by Hauser examining the May 7th welterweight title fight between champ Manny Pacquiao and Shane Mosley.

There was as time when Shane Mosley was viewed by those in the know as the future of boxing. To paraphrase Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr, he was young, handsome, fast, and couldn’t possibly be beat.

Mosley won his first 38 fights; 35 of them by knockout. He defeated Philip Holiday to win the lightweight championship in 1997 and dominated the division with eight successful title defenses. Then he moved to welterweight and dethroned Oscar De La Hoya to claim the 147-pound crown.

Shane and Roy Jones Jr were the top two fighters on virtually every pound-for-pound list. No less an authority than legendary trainer Eddie Futch said that Mosley would have been competitive against Sugar Ray Robinson in his prime.

On January 26, 2002, everything changed. Mosley and Vernon Forrest entered the ring at Madison Square Garden as the two best welterweights in the world. Shane was an overwhelming favorite. But he had the habit of pulling straight back when moving away from a foe.

When a fighter pulls straight back against a taller athletically-gifted opponent, he gets hit.

Against Forrest, Shane absorbed a hellacious beating in the early rounds. “When you get hit with a big shot,” he said afterward, “your equilibrium goes, your timing goes with it, and you get hit with more shots. It takes a few rounds for you to get your charge back.”

Showing incredible courage, Shane fought his way back into the fight. Then, in the late rounds, Forrest put more of a beating on him en route to a unanimous decision triumph.

Time goes by. Mosley isn’t one of boxing’s young guns anymore. He’ll be forty years old in September.

There was a time when Shane’s greatest assets were youth, speed, and power. As he moved up in weight (fighting eight of his last fourteen bouts in the junior-middleweight division), he slowed a bit and his power failed to increase in tandem with his size.

Just as significantly, Shane acknowledges, “When I started my rise, my thing was, ‘I can’t lose. I have to make a living from this and no one can beat me.’ Then you’re on top and you cross over a barrier where you’re not working out as much as you should because you’re only fighting twice a year and the fire goes out a bit.”

Mosley is popular within the boxing community. He’s a warrior and has always been willing to go in tough. He really will fight anyone. He has a lot of pride. He’s stubborn, good-natured, and a nice guy. His smile is genuine. People like him. Outside the ring, there’s no meanness in him.

The greatest knock against Shane is that he sometimes makes unwise choices. He beat Oscar De La Hoya twice, turned down a third fight, and wound up losing to Winky Wright for a fraction of what he would have made against Oscar. Testimony before a grand jury that investigated BALCO (including Mosley’s own testimony), confirmed that he used banned performance enhancing drugs in 2003. Shane has claimed that he took the drugs unknowingly. Circumstances suggest otherwise.

Now Shane is readying for what might be the last big fight of his ring career. On May 7th, he’ll do battle with Manny Pacquiao at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

The choice of Mosley as Pacquiao’s opponent disappointed those who believe that Shane was once an elite fighter but is now little more than an elite name. He hasn’t won a fight since January 2009 and, over the past fifty months, has two wins against two losses and a draw.

There are whispers . . . “Shane Mosley is an aging fighter. It shows in his face; you can hear it in his voice. His reflexes have slowed; his legs are gone. He’s running on fumes.”

Speed has always been one of Mosley’s biggest advantages. When he was decisioned by Floyd Mayweather Jr last year, Floyd’s speed seemed to befuddle, perhaps even intimidate, him a bit.

Thus, Freddie Roach (Pacquiao’s trainer) says, “I feel very confident about this fight. The longer it goes, the better for us. We’re going to fight at a fast pace and make sure that Shane fights three minutes of every round. Footwork will be key; lateral movement, going in and out. I think we can break him down and take him out in the late rounds. Since nobody has ever stopped Shane before, it would be icing on the cake if we can stop him.”

The odds opened with Pacquiao as a heavy favorite. There’s a degree of distortion in the betting line because Manny has such a fervent constituency. Still, Shane is a decided underdog for a reason.

That said, a Mosley victory isn’t out of the question.

The bar might rise as a fighter gets older. But at any given time, there’s one weight that’s best for a fighter. Shane is back at 147 pounds, which is where he belongs.

Mosley is 5-feet-9-inches tall. Over the years, taller fighters have given him trouble. Vernon Forrest (6 feet), Winky Wright (5-feet-10 inches), and Sergio Mora (6-feet) accounted for five of the seven blemishes on his record. Pacquiao is two-and-a-half inches shorter than Shane.

Then there’s the matter of the common opponents that Pacquiao and Mosley have fought. Manny scored impressive knockout victories over Oscar De La Hoya and Miguel Cotto, while Shane won two narrow decisions over De La Hoya and lost to Cotto.

But (and this is a big “but”) Mosley destroyed Antonio Margarito en route to a brutal ninth-round knockout. Pacquiao dominated Margarito and won a lopsided decision. But in the sixth round, Antonio hurt Manny, badly.

One can argue that Margarito was there for Mosley to hit. Antonio is slow and stood right in front of Shane all night long. But Antonio was just as slow and just as stationary against Pacquiao. The difference might have been that Shane is naturally bigger and a naturally bigger puncher than Manny and takes a better punch.

Either way, it should be remembered that Mosley was widely viewed as over-the-hill and a heavy underdog before he fought Margarito.

Don Turner trained Evander Holyfield for his monumental upset of Mike Tyson in 1996. “Like most people, I think Pacquiao will win,” Turner posits. “But fighters are the most unpredictable of all athletes. Both guys have a lot of heart. Shane can still punch. Pacquiao is willing to take a punch to land one, and that could get him in trouble. Pacquiao can be hurt; he isn’t invulnerable. Joshua Clottey didn’t throw many punches, but the ones that landed showed on Pacquiao’s face after the fight. Margarito did a lot of damage with one shot to the body. Shane isn’t what he used to be; we know that. But Shane still has skills. He takes a good punch. He hits hard enough to break Pacquiao’s nose and open a cut around Pacquiao’s eye. Let’s say some of Shane’s punches land just right.”

“We’d be fools to underestimate Shane and think that he’s shot,” acknowledges Freddie Roach. “He still has speed, a right hand, and good power. We can’t just walk in to him, because he’s a good counterpuncher. We can’t stand in front of him, because he’ll land the right hand and the hook. Early in the fight is when he’s going to be most dangerous. He whacked Mayweather with a pretty good right hand that had Floyd holding on early. I’d rather that Manny not get hit with a punch like that.”

And Naazim Richardson (Mosley’s trainer) adds, “I understand why people are picking Pacquiao to win. If you look at recent fights, his performances lead you in that direction and Shane’s performances lead you in the opposite direction. But Shane can win this fight.”

“Pacquiao hasn’t had much trouble with the bigger guys he’s fought so far,” Richardson elaborates. “His opponents at the lower weights were more competive against him, and the reason for that is speed. The big guys that Pacquiao has fought were too slow to deal with him. Shane is faster than any of those guys. Also, Pacquiao will fly at you like Superman. But when he does that, he’s open if you can time him. The reason he had so much trouble with [Juan Manuel] Marquez is that Marquez is a technician. After Marquez adjusted to Pacquiao’s speed, he was able to time him. Shane can do that too.”

“Manny Pacquiao is a phenomenal fighter, one of the best in history,” Richardson continues. “And he’s there to fight. He’ll jump on your ass and take everything you hit him with to get his own punches in. But don’t count Shane out. Any man that Shane hits at 147 pounds, he can hurt him. All the people who are saying that this will be a walk in the park for Pacquiao don’t know what they’re talking about.”

So how will it end?

“You have two guys who fight their heart out,” says Don Turner. “Right now, one guy has equal boxing skill and is superior physically to the other. You can’t take Shane back to the way he was because he’s thirty-nine. But he’ll fight hard enough that he’ll make some noise early.”

Given that reality, Mosley’s best chance of winning would seem to lie in making this a Hagler-Hearns type of fight. If he does that, chances are that Pacquiao will oblige him and fans will get a firefight that’s well worth their money. After that, what happens happens.

One unknown is whether Shane is still mentally tough enough to fight that kind of fight. He showed that toughness in the first loss of his career against Vernon Forrest. That was in keeping with the maxim that great fighters have great tolerance for pain and will walk through fire during the prime years of their career.

But as fighters age, they reach a point where their tolerance for pain diminishes. They’re often less willing (and less able) to walk through fire to win.

Mosley has taken a lot of punishment over the years; in fights and in the gym. In some ways, he fights “like a Mexican fighter.” But against Mayweather, Shane’s will to fight through the rough spots seemed to waver. As that bout moved into the late rounds, he looked like a man who was trying to survive rather than win.

The most likely scenario for Pacquiao-Mosley is that both fighters will engage and Shane will have his moments. But at night’s end, his body will come to the conclusion that enough is enough.

Still, a word of caution –

The odds on Pacquiao-Mosley opened with Shane a 6-to-1 underdog. Vernon Forrest was a 6 to 1 underdog the night that he turned Shane Mosley’s world upside down.

Thomas Hauser can be reached by email at [email protected]. His most recent book (“Waiting For Carver Boyd”) was published by JR Books and can be purchased at http://www.amazon.com.