By Cliff Rold

By Christmas morning 2009, Santa will have exited and the cookies will be gone.  That will be a good thing for the World’s best Welterweight.

After all, cookies can get in the way with a weigh in on tap.

Yes, while others are opening their gifts, carving up hams and turkeys, a then-38 year old “Sugar” Shane Mosley will be preparing to make sure his body is no more than 147 lbs.  He’ll look across the scale into the eyes of a man many felt did enough to upset Miguel Cotto in June, Joshua Clottey (35-3, 20 KO), and prepare himself for a December 26th showdown.

Ho, ho…how did this happen again?

There might be truth in the old saying ‘no good deed goes unpunished.’  There is certainly truth in saying that, for Mosley, no great win gets justly rewarded. 

For the third time in his long career, Mosley is coming off of what should have been a winning lottery ticket and has found nowhere to truly cash it.  This third un-charming time is the freshest in memory even if January 24, 2009, already feels long past. 

That was the night Mosley stepped in the underdog against WBA Welterweight titlist Antonio Margarito.  The fight is remembered for a failed attempt in the Margarito camp at tainted gloves.  Somehow lost was what Mosley did after the clean gloves came on.

Over nine rounds, Mosley beat Margarito like he was fresh off the club scene.   He knocked out a man who had rarely been stunned previously, cracking an iron chin which came with genetic plaster.  Millions tuned in and every seat in the Staples Center was full.  If anyone had said in the aftermath that almost another year would go by, that Mosley’s reward would be Clottey for Christmas, it would have seemed absurd.

For Mosley, it is routine.

The first time Mosley’s world was supposed to turn up oysters was in the summer of 2000.  In a classic chess match, he came from behind early to best Oscar De La Hoya, adding a Welterweight crown to his resume for the first time.  It was the first decisive loss of De La Hoya’s career and so commanding a performance that many elevated Mosley to the top pound-for-pound spot.  With Felix Trinidad still only one fight into his Jr. Middleweight run, and an Oscar sure to want revenge, Mosley’s turn on the stage had arrived.

Except it didn’t.

De La Hoya chose time off and some brand rebuilding against Arturo Gatti and Javier Castillejo.  Trinidad chose to chase Roy Jones by heading to Middleweight.  Mosley wound up with three defenses against names known only to hardcore fans and then a Vernon Forrest who every major player at Welterweight before him had done their best to avoid.

Forrest used Mosley to prove why in January 2002.  Drubbed over twelve rounds, Sugar was left looking less than nutra sweet.  Their immediate rematch, one of the worst big fights of the 2000s and perhaps the only awful fight on Mosley’s ledger, did him no favors in public esteem.

It wasn’t bad for matchmaking.

Suddenly vulnerable, De La Hoya’s thirst for vengeance quickly kicked in and in September 2003, the rematch was made for the Jr. Middleweight title.  A lesser fight than their first, it was still good enough to spark a scoring controversy which remains to this day, later adding a ‘Mosley was juiced’ storyline to immortalize the contest.  Controversial or not, Mosley’s fortunes seemed on the rise and he had the perfect opponent in the wings.

Ricardo Mayorga had upset Andrew Lewis in 2002 to win the WBA belt and twice upset Forrest to declare himself the lineal World champion at Welterweight in 2003.  Sports Illustrated did a feature story on the wild Nicaraguan.  A pay-per-view showdown with Mosley for the early spring of 2004 was a done deal.  All Mayorga had to do was finish his run to undisputed crown by beating the feather-fisted Cory Spinks.

Tucked on the pay-per-view undercard of a Bernard Hopkins-William Joppy headlined show seen by probably half the people reading right now (okay not that bad), Mayorga-Spinks was the fight of the night.

Mayorga lost.

Mosley was boxed in. 

He’d already voted on pride not to accept a financial offer from De La Hoya for a third fight which would have seen him make significantly less than the man he’d beaten twice.  No one knew at the time that Spinks could sell tickets the way he does in St. Louis.  That left Mosley again staring at a man no one else really wanted.

Winky Wright beat him bad in a unification contest.  Then he beat him again in a closer fight. 

It was up and down from there, good money to be made with wins over Fernando Vargas and Luis Collazo and a close loss to Cotto.  It could have been better but circumstances intervened; there might have been a Floyd Mayweather fight after Vargas.  Bigger plans for Mayweather-De La Hoya, and the still inexplicable need for dental care Mosley used to explain why he didn’t want to fight Floyd in the fall of 2006, got in the way.  It appeared another moment like those offered by his wins over Oscar would not develop again.

Until it did.

And now this moment has turned out, so far, like the others.  Mayweather elected for a relatively easier (if World Lightweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez can be called easy), certainly smaller, touch in his return.  The world’s pound-for-pound best, Manny Pacquiao, made other dangerous plans with Cotto.  Even a fighter with a ratio of elite wins to losses standing at about one to everything else, former Welterweight champion Zab Judah, found time to mock an offer from Mosley.

It left Mosley with Clottey, a fighter every bit as dangerous as any other he desired but with little of the cache.  For the fans, it will be one hell of a fight, the sort with the potential to steal Fight of the Year honors from the field behind it. 

For Mosley though, it will be another reminder that being a regularly entertaining, gutsy, sure-fire future Hall of Famer has just never been quite good enough where he is concerned. 

Cliff Rold is a member of the Ring Magazine Ratings Advisory Panel and the Boxing Writers Association of America.  He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com