By Patrick Kehoe

No, you cannot completely run from your past – even as time’s distancing from events and circumstances, from actions made from intentions – with perceptual memory coloured over. We are, in the final analysis, the sum total of that which we have undertaken and those choices we have failed to acknowledge as possibility.

Of course, “Sugar” Shane Mosley fights Floyd Mayweather, May 1st, with a sense of historical purpose and for the pride of being, once again, at the summit of his chosen profession: professional boxer. We are mindful here, that Mosley holds the WBA welterweight title in trust, yet for this fight, he enters as the de facto challenger. His title strewn journey from undefeated lightweight champion all the way to jr. middleweight and back down to welterweight honours, has not made Mosley’s fistic journey complete. In many ways the veteran champion Mosley, former pound for pound stand-in, remains a desperate man, hungry for new beginnings and the healing that beating all the odds can bestow.

The ridiculing humiliation of his BALCO year, 2003, remains an open wound, for which the likes of Floyd Mayweather enacts taunting disdain, along with the fact of Mosley’s 5 career defeats contrasted so glaringly against Mayweather’s unblemished CV. Such are the pre-fight ‘talking points’ arrayed against Mosley, the consensus aging great. Or should we indulge in flattery and call him ageless? Though “Money” Mayweather may deride Mosley’s ambitions “to be the best” as pathetically romantic – lacking the pragmatism of boxing’s bottom line, making the green – Mosley understands that the money is already a given, already accounted for as material gain. Then Mosley reminds us that, as a partner in Golden Boy Promotions, the fight’s operative promotional entity, “I’m really writing his cheque.” 

The verbal sparring will not settle the issue of superiority – that too – Mosley smiles at, knowingly. With so much to prove, Mosley has found a burning purpose, something to push his life-story past performance enhancing admissions and denials, past a failed marriage, past the limitations of nearing forty in a business which prizes reflexive craft and adaptability within gripping exhaustion.

There remain so many reasons to trust Mosley, so many to doubt him.

True enough to his essential character, for self-sacrificing professionalism and renewing plausibility, Mosley has been hard at work in Big Bear Lake, California, dignity defining him, reconstituting the fighter within. The welterweight champion has chosen to let Mayweather talk to himself, choosing to hunker down and work out exact methods for success with Bernard Hopkins associate, trainer-philosopher Naazim Richardson. Mosley has always been about putting in the laborious hours on the road at altitude, keeping to dietary strictures, doing the hard yards, when only he knows just how far he can push himself. If his contest with Mayweather comes down to sheer effort, Mosley has prepared himself.

What the Sugar Man has set his attentions toward would become the dark day of reckoning for Mayweather.

In that sense, Mayweather’s correct, Mosley understands and appreciates the romantic core of elite boxing, that a champion’s destiny moves from invincibility to diminishment and sometimes, for a select few, a renewal of the wholeness that makes for greatness. Mosley has endured tragedy; losing being the counterpointing parallel to victory. And yet the long road can turn, orientations back to promise secured, memory enduring, the body casting off the fragility of existence coming at us all.

Most boxing insiders are not convinced that “Sugar” Shane Mosley, now 38 years-old, can actually accomplish his goal of being the first man to defeat Floyd Mayweather in a professional boxing contest. Where Mosley assesses himself as the faster boxer and the more dynamic puncher, general consensus puts Mayweather categorically above the Pomona, California native, in terms of punching virtuosity, combination invention, foot speed and defensive soundness.

Not to mention that at 33, and only one inch shorter, Mayweather comes across as the prime fighter, fuelled with career momentum translated so often via egotistical confidence that he psychologically wields as self-promotional bluster, and, simple fact. Mosley finds the idea of boxing being all about Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather ludicrous, presumptuous and, frankly, offensive, as he must! Shane Mosley also understands that boxing is not a democracy of needs. Boxing is a jungle with a glass pyramid for a heart. Even fighting ones way through the jungle means encountering the final, treacherous climb to the top. Falling never considered an option.

For Mosley, the rhythms of ascent and decent are all too familiar.

Mosley’s experience at boxing’s championship elite level makes most of Mayweather’s expletive filled barbs run together as background noise, the manic mumblings of a man who still seems desperate to convince the whole world of something ‘he says’ is undeniable. Let him talk. And yet no amount of meditative dignity and professional centeredness can hide Mosley’s champion’s pride. Yes, has adopted more than Bernard Hopkins’ trainer in the person of Naazim Richardson. Richardson specializes in finding small faults in fighters, limitations often hidden by other exceptional and compensating gifts. Attention to the detailing of an opponent’s complete ‘in the ring presence’ becomes the subject for study for Richardson.

Floyd Mayweather calls himself a math problem that no one has found the answer for. The obsessively analytical Richardson loves a puzzle. Mosley, has indeed, found his man.

Many of Floyd Mayweather’s fights are exhibitions in precision, with distancing for punching opportunism covered, folding into defensive fortifications, only to be turned into instantaneous launching pads. For all of his wondrous artfulness, Mayweather resists engaging in pitched battles. His ability to conserve energy within defensive resilience, while metering out combination punching, has marked his great career. And therein, Team Mosley believes it can find avenues leading to victory.

Take away the flow and formulations of Mosley’s defense into offense boxing and you erode Mayweather’s invulnerability. Jose Luis Castillo drew up an incomplete blueprint on how to topple Mayweather; the Mexican lightweight champion did, however, illustrate rudimentary laws. Team Mosley knows how important going to the body will be against Mayweather. That closing distance while punching acts as defensive shield and attack optioning equally. That Mayweather retreats to then counterpunch in-between an attackers offensive strike cadences. And importantly, punching accuracy can confound Mayweather for brief intervals for power hitting measures. All of these ‘elements’ are in the video files on Mayweather, Richardson having surveyed all relevant Mayweather video data.

The only secrets between Shane Mosley and Floyd Mayweather have to do with conviction, bravery and wilfulness under extreme duress. Shane Mosley will be seeking out the defining moments, intervals within the ebbing and cresting of punching and being punched, minute tendencies to exploit for the purpose of creating a masterpiece of demolition, the ruin of Floyd Mayweather, Jr.

For 17 years as a professional Mosley has most often exploded into the deficiencies of ring opponents. His jittering speed and self-igniting punching power comes from both sides, beyond thought, materializing out of raw talent for making it happen. And everything Mosley wants for his boxing future depends on making Floyd Mayweather a victim of his power boxing.

Will he be there, the champion he’s always been, his flourishing blows already accelerating, unloading on the target of Mayweather’s fleeting figure, at the defining moments?

Then what would Shane Mosley’s life and times look like, exactly? Money isn’t everything, after all.

Patrick Kehoe may be reached at pkehoe@telus.net