14.04.04 – By Lee Hayes – Shane Mosley had a phenomenal amateur boxing career, one of the most successful in American boxing history. He had the pedigree for greatness. He even appeared to deserve the almost impossible, nearly blasphemous, moniker of “Sugar”. His hands were a blur of speed. He worked the body with consistency. He obliterated his opposition in the spectacular fashion that a true champion is supposed to, with a contemptuousness that defies what all the rest of us regular mortals consider possible. He was near perfect and he managed to surpass a prime Felix Trinidad, Oscar De la Hoya, Roy Jones Jr. and Evander Holyfield on most experts top pound for pound lists.
How so many things have changed in a short period of time. How the mighty have fallen. Make no mistake, Mosley is valiant, and this writer has been a career fan of “Sugar” Shane. But it is no oversight that he is no longer referred to as “Sugar”. It is now just “Shane Mosley”. Perhaps it is better left that way, until he is able to climb back to the top of the boxing elite. Twice now Shane has found himself at the pinnacle of boxing elite, having defeated its favorite son, Oscar De la Hoya. Twice Mosely has blown the opportunity it represented to transcend the sport he has dedicated his life to.
By all accounts of those close to Mosley, he is a class act, a decent man of high moral character. His attitude and charm are almost naïve in their unadulterated honesty, despite being led by an obsessively overbearing trainer/father in Jack Mosley. Anybody close to the Mosley camp could tell you that his father ran the show, and was possibly the worst case of a trainer living vicariously through his protégé’s successes. Jack practically took credit for every victory his son achieved, every success his son toiled to mount. He also equally abandoned Shane in his losses. Blaming them on Shane’s inability to follow the game plan he had set out.
The BALCO controversy that has questioned Shane’s involvement in steroid and steroid derivative usage looms in the background near the twilight of the sweet one’s career. It brings some logical questions to mind. Did Shane Mosley take performance enhancing drugs? And if so, did he know he was taking them in the “supplements” that BALCO provided for him? Mosely has been rather cryptic in his answers regarding the allegations. He has openly stated that he has never taken steroids and uses his lack of positive drug test results as evidence. Yet the drug that Mosley has been accused of being linked to, THG, has never been tested for and to this writer’s knowledge is still not being tested for. So then, the questions remain unanswered. Barring a full confession from Mosely, we may never know the truth.
Here are some facts regarding Shane’s physiological progression, or in this case regression. Shane has risen from lightweight (135lbs) to a 154 lbs junior middleweight without gaining any noticeable body fat. It’s not impossible to do naturally, as Shane obviously has good genetics, but it’s is very unlikely. Look at the body of Oscar De la Hoya who is Shane’s main contemporary and who has also moved up from the ranks of lightweight. Oscar looks to be in shape; however there is a definite difference in his body make up that shows a natural progression to junior welterweight and now to middleweight. Julio Ceasar Chavez can also be sited as an example of what a fighters body typically looks like when the move up in multiple weight classes. Also, Shane used to be a weight lifter before he joined the professional ranks. It’s been sited that he is able to bench press more than a prime Joe Frazier could. Impressive stuff indeed, for a guy that was 130 lbs at the time. No doubt when Shane took weight lifting seriously, by his own admission, he encountered the offer of performance enhancing drugs. As anyone that has frequented a gym knows, these substances are quite available to just about anybody. It seems odd to me that Shane Mosley and father, Jack, obviously had a relationship with the BALCO Corporation, when there are several other, higher praised, supplement companies out there that have just as good, and in many cases better, reputations for quality. Shane plugged their products and visited their main headquarters on no less than one occasion.
Sure, it’s difficult to swallow that one of our heroes, especially one as clean cut and wholesome as Shane, could be involved in any sort of a scam that involves cheating but there is plenty of precedence for this behavior. Tommy Hearns once accused nemesis Sugar Ray Leonard of using steroids to bulk up to the super middleweight division. No doubt, Leonard was even more clean-cut than Shane; Ray was the all- American. Roy Jones jr. tested positive for the steroid Nanandrolone after his bout with Richard Hall, who also tested positive for an anabolic. There have been several other prominent boxers to fail steroid tests after bouts, notably Fernando Vargas and Francois Botha.
Perhaps if Shane did, in fact, use some sort of a performance enhancer, we should be more forgiving. This writer might suggest that we boxing fans are partially to blame. In today’s pugilistic world, we demand so much of our fighers that we may be the ones who have brought on the increasingly disturbing positive drug tests. Now, if a young fighter wants to be deemed legitimate, he must maintain his undefeated record. The boxing public is unforgiving, even when it concerns a single loss. Perhaps the amount of pressure that Shane felt was so immense that it turned this once wholesome, friendly guy, to a chemical lab, in order to maintain that perfect “O” on his record. The results may have backfired on Mosley. By some accounts, he first became involved with the BALCO lab before his first bout with Vernon Forrest, Mosley’s first loss. In that fight, we the fans saw a different Shane Mosley than we had become accustomed to. The rapid fire combinations were all gone, the stamina seemingly zapped from his Adonis-like body. His once famous foot work was depleted to a stand still slugging. We were left with a man that appeared to only know how to throw one punch at a time. Another loss to Vernon Forrest showed none of the adjustments that a young Sugar Shane used to be able to make. Shane, reduced to throwing one punch at a time, as if it was all he was capable of doing, was going for the one-bomb knock out. He was a shell of his former self. Perhaps we over looked the continuation of Shane’s demise during the De la Hoya bout. After all, Mosley was victorious, even though it seemed to most ring side observers, that Oscar deserved the nod. Shane did not show a lot of foot work and clearly was throwing one shot at a time.
The judges happened to side with Mosley’s new found style but it didn’t last for long. Finally, Ronald “Winky” Wright, a slick southpaw with under-rated body strength, was able to show us exactly how badly our Sweet one had dropped off the charts. Mosley looked absolutely horrendous in that fight. Afterwards Shane said that he “just didn’t feel right”. That his body was “unable to do the things I had done in sparring”. He felt as though his body had abandoned him, and left the genius mind, to only wonder what could have been. There may be hope for Shane yet, as he pulls himself away from his overbearing father and looks for new light with trainer Dan Goosen. Mosley has been close with Goosen since he was a kid, so there will be no time wasted developing a trust and bond that a fighter usually needs when changing management.
After his loss to Wright, and subsequent change of trainer, Shane seems as optimistic as ever. Regarding the persistent steroid allegations, Shane has only said this, “Yeah, the steroids, my new management and I are going to make some adjustments and fix the problem.” That is not a denial that he ever used performance enhancers such as THG. It may be an indicator that he is no longer looking for the quick fix, however. And that may be good enough to resurrect his fading career. One thing is for sure, Shane has always given us everything he had in the ring, and if he is guilty of pushing himself to hard, to the point where he may have made some mistakes, this writer is willing to forgive him and hope that he is either able to get his career back on track, or simply walk off into the sunset. A story book ending, much like another famous Shane we all know.
This writer welcomes your comments and suggestions.