There’s nothing that Shane Mosley likes to do more than fight. Some folks were meant to be doctors, others accountants, and many others lawyers (because we don’t have enough of them, right?). This guy was meant to be a professional prizefighter. How much does he like being a boxer? He even likes going to training camp to prepare for fights.
Yeah, he enjoys it that much.
So in the wake of his closely contested loss to Miguel Cotto last November, it was with great anticipation that ‘Sugar’ Shane looked ahead to 2008. But it won?t be until late September that he’ll make his inaugural appearance this year.
He was scheduled to take on Zab Judah in late May before a shower door interrupted those plans. So now he will face Ricardo Mayorga at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California on September 27th.
?It?s been crazy, I’ve been waiting to get off the ground and fight,” he would say this past Thursday afternoon at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, where the official kick-off press conference for the bout with Mayorga was held. “With Zab Judah backing out or hurting himself, it’s like, ‘I don’t know what’s going on.’ With this Ricardo Mayorga fight, I’m like, ‘Good, let’s do it.’ I’ll fight at ’54, ’47, whatever.”
With the suspicious nature of Judah’s injury – deep lacerations on his left arm – Mosley’s camp decided to call off the whole event altogether.
“Actually, he cancelled it because he said he couldn’t fight in two weeks,” Mosley clarified. “I think that HBO couldn’t make another date or whatever because it was pay-per-view. And it just didn’t make sense and then Zab couldn’t do anything. You?ve seen the fight (with Joshua Clottey) where he said he was head-butted, but it was clearly a left uppercut. So anything can happen with Zab and we didn’t want to be bothered with that. Ricardo Mayorga, you know he’s coming to fight every time out.”
In keeping with the theme of 2008 for Mosley, the matchup with Mayorga was originally scheduled to take place on October 11th, which meant that his training schedule was disrupted.
“It might have been affected a little bit but I’ve been working,” said Mosley, who mentioned that when he was in Australia working with his fighter, Billy Dib, that he trained throughout his stay ‘Down Under.’
It’s clear, that despite being 36 years old and having put in 15 hard years in the business, he still has the motivation and drive he had coming up as a gym phenom that turned heads as an unknown teenager.
“Definitely, definitely, even more,” he states. “I can’t wait to get in the ring.” While he says this, his face lights up. There’s no denying this – the man loves boxing. And what has amped up his motivation is working side by side with his son, Shane Jr., who is now an aspiring boxer. “He knows the difference in my enthusiasm, and the motivation that I have when I’m coming to these fights. My son, everybody sees the difference. So come September 27th, when the people come and watch me, they’re going to see a different Shane and they’re going to understand why.”
If he wins as expected, it’s clear who he wants in his forecast.
‘The Tijuana Tornado.’
“We don’t want nobody else,” said his father/trainer, Jack.
Shane adds, “I definitely do, I don’t want him to get in the ring with anybody else. If he wants to fight in December, he wants to fight in January or February, it doesn’t matter. Let’s do it. Don’t go anywhere else, I’ll be right there. I might even fight him in October.”
We told you he’s itching to fight.
SALESMEN
Vince McMahon would love Mayorga, because nobody knows how to play the role of the heel quite like ‘El Matador’. And in recent years it’s become customary for the sport?s biggest names to pull his name out of the Rolodex as they look for a guy with a recognizable name, talks junk and yet is imminently beatable.
He stirs it up, he creates interest and then dutifully takes a beating – albeit in an entertaining fashion – Fernando Vargas fight, withstanding.
In other words, in the immortal words of ‘the Rock’ – he knows his role.
Once again, he provided some good copy for all the scribes this past week, while presenting Mosley with a pair of pink boxing gloves, lighting up a Marlboro as Mosley mentioned that he was a bit lacking in cardiovascular fitness and getting into it with Cassius Green, Mosley’s talkative cutman, in the audience. While we’ve all seen this act before, everyone inside the banquet hall seemed to be enjoying the spectacle, regardless.
Some of his verbal jabs:
– “It’s going to be a short fight, like in the amateurs, a three round fight, maybe.”
– “I think the slogan or the moniker of this fight should be, ‘Shane’s permanent return to home.'”
– “I’m the man that night and he’s going to be my woman that night.”
– “Your speed is all gone, you got no power, you’re all washed up.”
– “Remember when I send you home, you can go wash the dishes like you usually do, maybe your boss will give me the opportunity for the rematch in December.”
Through it all, Mosley just laughed and smiled. There’s really not much that upsets him. He seemed to understand this was all part of facing Mayorga.
Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer said of the Nicaraguan, “He really is a colorful character to say the least. Talk about colorful with those pink gloves. But he really knows how to sell a fight.”
As much of the media had left and Mosley was at a roundtable session with the last remaining reporters, Mayorga would come over to Mosley with a boxing glove, say a few words to him and after Mosley would sign the glove, he and Mayorga would pose happily for photos with the signed gloves that had both their John Hancocks. As Mayorga departed, he would respectfully tap Mosley on the shoulder as if to say, ‘Hey, this was fun, I’ll see you in September.’
IT’S NOT PPV, IT’S HBO
Not only was this event originally scheduled for October 11th, it was also supposed to take place at the Staples Center and be a pay-per-view event. But when it’s all said and done, it probably ended up where it should have all along, at the cozy Home Depot Center and on regular HBO.
“Well, you and many other media people complained bitterly about it being on pay-per-view,” Schaefer would tell this reporter. “So I went back and applied some negotiating skills and was able to get the fight finally on HBO. But I think that’s where it belonged to start with.”
Schaefer says that on many occasions, going the pay-per-view route is a necessary evil.
“Sometimes as a promoter, TV dates are very rare commodities. So you really don’t have a choice. You have a responsibility, which we take very serious, to keep our fighters busy, to keep them in the ring. So sometimes if you don’t have a television date, you need to take the risk and we take the risk and we had to take the risk to put it on pay-per-view.”
Going back to Schaefer’s original statement, geez, did I say something coming out against pay-per-views?
Oh, yeah, right. Uh, never mind.
TIXS
The Home Depot Center has always been one of my favorite venues to watch a fight. The tennis stadium has great sight lines and doesn’t seem to have a bad seat in the house. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this venue, and AEG in general, has been great for boxing in Southern California.
Tickets for Mosley-Mayorga went on sale this past Thursday and are priced from $350, $150, $75 and $50 and can be purchased at any Ticketmaster outlet or their website (www.ticketmaster.com) or www.aegtickets.com or at the Home Depot Center box office.
FINAL FLURRIES
I think Eddie Futch is rolling over in his grave with Antonio Margarito being presented a motorcycle by Affliction……On August 30th a show in Cincinnati, Ohio will take place featuring the comebacking Lamon Brewster, Rashad Holloway and Aaron Pryor Jr…..I hear that Kermit Cintron, who recently signed with DiBella Entertainment, will make his return to the ring on the Jermain Taylor-Jeff Lacy undercard on November 15th….How bout a fight between jr. welters Mike Alvarado and Ali Oubaali? I think that’s a good scrap….Gary Shaw tells me that he’s looking to get newly crowned IBF jr. bantamweight titlist Vic Darchinyan back in the ring by November….OK, now that Top Rank’s planned show in Macau has been backed up (again), I refuse to believe a show will actually take place there until it actually does….I’ve been told that hot jr. middleweight prospect James Kirkland will headline the September 5th edition of ‘FNF’ on ESPN2 from Austin, Texas at the Austin Music Hall….Yeah, folks, believe me, I’d rather NFL pre-season football than the Olympics…. Here’s hoping and praying that the Miami-UNC game on September 27th is a day game….Oh, now I know why former presidential candidate John Edwards was spending so much on his haircuts….
