Twenty-five years ago today, on June 17, 2000, Shane Mosley took on Oscar De La Hoya in the right fight at the right time – and, importantly, in the right place.

The event certainly could have landed in Las Vegas, at Mandalay Bay or maybe the Thomas & Mack Center, and nobody would have had a problem with it. It could’ve been a Madison Square Garden fight and had no trouble generating a massive gate.

But if ever there has been a fight that belonged in Southern California, it was this one. 

Staples Center (now the Crypto.com Arena) opened its doors eight months earlier, and the welterweight title showdown between East Los Angeles’ “Golden Boy” and “Sugar Shane” from Pomona, some 30 miles east, was booked as its first boxing event.

As fortune would have it, just two days later in the same building, the Shaquille O’Neal/Kobe Bryant Lakers defeated the Indiana Pacers to win the first of their three consecutive NBA titles. But it was De La Hoya vs. Mosley, thanks to all the floor seating, that drew the larger crowd – a then-record at Staples of 20,744 – as L.A. sat firmly at the center of the sports universe for an extended weekend.

“I was really good friends with Shaq and the other guys on that Lakers team,” Mosley, now 53, recalled last weekend as he spoke to BoxingScene from Big Bear, California – the very site at which he trained to fight Oscar a quarter-century ago. “Between our fight and the Lakers game, there were so many people in town, so many celebrities. I remember seeing all these celebrities around the ring just to watch me and Oscar. It was unreal, like something out of a movie.”

From Muhammad Ali to Jack Nicholson to Denzel Washington, the ringside area was overflowing with A-plus-listers.

And so was Mosley’s after-party on the Sunset Strip. Sugar Shane rattled off the names, and two in particular stand out all these years later:

Will Smith and Chris Rock were both there.

There were no open-hand slaps that night, though. Everyone was too busy buzzing over the closed-fist combat they’d just witnessed.

De La Hoya and Mosley were Southern California’s two best fighters at the time, both in the top five on any sound pound-for-pound list (along with Roy Jones, Floyd Mayweather and Felix Trinidad), both in their physical primes, with Mosley 28 years old and De La Hoya 27.

The Golden Boy was the pre-fight favorite; he’d opened as a narrow 7-to-5 choice, but bettors backing boxing’s cash cow pushed him all the way to 13-to-5 by the opening bell.

For the most part, De La Hoya’s favored status owed to him being perceived as the bigger man. He’d been a welterweight for more than three years and entered the fight with a title belt to defend, having snapped up a vacant strap following his highly controversial decision loss to Trinidad in September ’99.

More to the point, De La Hoya was perceived as the number-one welterweight in the world, particularly with “Tito” having moved up a division.

Mosley, meanwhile, was unproven at welter. Following a dominant lightweight title reign – eight defenses, all by KO, in under two years – Sugar Shane had fought only twice at welterweight.

The first of those was a crowd-pleasing struggle against Wilfredo Rivera. Mosley prevailed by emphatic and dramatic KO with 22 seconds left on the clock in the last round of a scheduled 10, but the fight seemed up for grabs entering that round – against an opponent De La Hoya had dominated a couple of years earlier. After that, Mosley trounced overmatched Willy Wise.

Great lightweight? Absolutely. Great welterweight? TBD.

Challenger Mosley, sporting a record of 34-0 (32 KOs), entered the ring first and was made to wait several minutes, while the Staples Center crowd was treated to a recording of the song “With These Hands,” sung by soon-to-be Latin Grammy nominee De La Hoya. Eventually, a live mariachi band took the baton, and De La Hoya, at the time 32-1 (26 KOs), made his ring walk.

It was unclear during Michael Buffer’s introductions whose side the crowd – which generated a gate of over $8 million, a new record for boxing in California – was on.

It quickly became clear whose side the hand speed advantage was on. Watching it back, the speed and athleticism of both men is dazzling in that opening round, a reminder of what it looks like when two great fighters collide in their primes. But the first round undoubtedly belonged to the quicker-fisted Mosley – leading trainer Robert Alcazar to tell De La Hoya between rounds that he was fighting at his opponent’s pace and should take a more measured approach.

De La Hoya absorbed that advice and used his jab effectively in the second round, while also managing to finish most of the exchanges and cover up Sugar Shane’s edge in speed. It was as easy a round to score as the opener, and the fight was even through two.

The next three rounds wouldn’t be so simple to judge. Mosley timed De La Hoya for the occasional right hand. De La Hoya snuck in a few of his signature left hooks. There was never any reckless caveman action, but there was never a boring moment either.

In the sixth, De La Hoya began to truly take over. He was the one moving forward at all times, and Mosley’s hands had lowered a few inches as he appeared to be slowing down. Early in Round 7, HBO’s Larry Merchant opined, “This is as good as we’ve seen Oscar in a very long time.” Mosley had his moments that round as well, but The Golden Boy’s body attack seemed to carry it.

Through seven rounds, judge Lou Filippo had Mosley leading 67-66, but Pat Russell and Marty Sammon both had Oscar up 68-65. (On my rewatch this week, I had De La Hoya in front 67-66.) With five rounds to go, Mosley needed to rally.

But after the seventh, the TV audience heard him tell his father/trainer Jack, “My back got a little tight.” We had a partial explanation for why he’d fallen behind, as well as a reason to be skeptical that he could turn things around.

“Actually, the back was tight in the second round, third round,” Mosley explained last weekend. “So what I did was, I was actually resting the first half of the fight. I was resting my back and saving my energy for a strong finish. I stayed away from Oscar. That’s why those early rounds are close, because I was not really going at my full pace yet. But I was confident. I figured I was going to sweep all those late rounds, and there was nothing he could do about it.”

Mosley effectively handcuffed De La Hoya in the eighth round, flashing his speed and switching to the southpaw stance briefly. By the ninth, the challenger was back at full energy, bouncing on his toes. He elevated the pace, throwing 76 punches, according to CompuBox, after mostly producing outputs in the 40s and 50s in previous rounds, while also persuading Oscar to pick up his own pace and throw his fight-high of 68. It was the best action round of the fight to that point, and the crowd noise amplified in confirmation.

“The difference was my foot speed,” Mosley reflected. “He couldn’t keep up with my foot speed. When my back got tight, I had to stay there a little closer, and I couldn't really move as much. But I knew I was faster than him, and especially, my footwork was faster.

“And I knew about his left hook. I fought him as a kid, in the amateurs, so I knew exactly what his strengths were. I knew how to get away from that hook. I always believed it was easier for me to fight Oscar than it was for anybody else.”

Mosley spent most of the 10th round scoring with single shots and then getting out of range. By the end of the close 11th round, Mosley had landed more total punches than any other opponent of De La Hoya’s ever had.

With three minutes remaining, Mosley was up by three points on Filippo’s card, down by three on Sammon’s card, and ahead by a single point on Russell’s. By my assessment, there had been four clear-cut Mosley rounds, three decisive De La Hoya rounds, and four where you could make a case either way (of which I scored three for Sugar Shane).

De La Hoya received somewhat conflicting advice from Alcazar, who told him both “be careful” and “you need this round.”

The bell rang, and both men bounded with “you need this round” energy, creating a poor man’s Larry Holmes-Ken Norton Round 15 – although a more one-sided version. The action was nonstop, both welterweights holding nothing back. “Both of them, daring to be great!” Merchant declared. Blood dripped from De La Hoya’s nose. Mosley worked the head and body, and The Golden Boy wouldn’t back up or back down, but he simply couldn’t match Mosley’s speed.

The crowd rose in unison at the 10-second clap – including Buffer, who could be seen clearly on the hard camera clapping his hands before getting swept away enough to raise his own arms in triumph at the bell.

It was the best round of the fight, but it was also a wipeout. CompuBox saw Mosley landing 45 of 88 punches, compared to 18 of 72 for Oscar.

“I was very nervous. I thought they might cheat me,” Mosley recalled of those moments waiting for the scores to be read. “I was scared. I was like, ‘Oh shit, here we go’ [when Sammon’s card for De La Hoya was read]. I knew I beat him, but when they said ‘And new,’ I was like, ‘Thank God, they got it right.’”

Sammon’s 115-113 for De La Hoya was overruled by Filippo’s 116-112 and Russell’s 115-113 for Mosley, who swept the final round on all cards to secure the win rather than open himself up to what could have been a highly controversial draw.

In another year, Mosley-De La Hoya could potentially have been crowned Fight of the Year – but not in the same calendar year that gave us Erik Morales-Marco Antonio Barrera I and Trinidad-Fernando Vargas.

In his post-fight interview with Merchant, De La Hoya hinted that losing the Trinidad fight the way he did – playing it overly safe down the stretch after outboxing Tito early – hurt him here, as he overcompensated by trying to give the fans an entertaining fight and not boxing as much as he should have.

Merchant asked if we’d see a rematch next.

“Well, of course, it has to happen,” De La Hoya said.

It did eventually, but not immediately. In the direct aftermath of his second professional loss, De La Hoya flirted with retirement. After nine months off – the longest inactive stretch of his career to that point – he returned to pound an overwhelmed Arturo Gatti, then moved up to 154lbs.

While Oscar was recovering from the sting of defeat, Mosley was capitalizing on his breakout win. For many, including The Ring magazine, this made him the pound-for-pound champ. And he looked as destructive and untouchable as ever in his next three fights, stopping Antonio Diaz in six rounds, Shannan Taylor in five and Adrian Stone in three.

But then Mosley, who was sure he’d had De La Hoya’s number since their amateur days, ran into the old amateur rival who had his, Vernon Forrest. By the time Mosley and De La Hoya rematched in 2003 – a fight that ended with Mosley taking a controversial unanimous decision – they each came in with two losses on their records.

While some consider the first De La Hoya fight to be Mosley’s greatest win, he doesn’t. He rates his 2009 knockout of Antonio Margarito – also at Staples Center, in front of the arena’s all-time record crowd of 20,820 – as his crowning moment.

“Beating Oscar was up there,” he said, “but for Margarito, they really thought that I was too old and I wasn’t gonna be able to win that fight. That was my best win.”

Mosley doesn’t quite consider the first win over De La Hoya his peak performance either.

“I would point to my lightweight fights, because I was very technically sound at lightweight. I was really technical and crisp and, man, that’s when I showed people I can do everything. Those fights showed my boxing IQ. They gave a total picture of what I could do.”

Surely Mosley can’t do all the same things physically anymore – but he’s still trying and still training. As noted earlier, he was in Big Bear when he spoke to BoxingScene. He and Oscar both trained for their fight there. (“It’s funny, sometimes I would see Oscar running by my house, because he had his house right behind mine,” Mosley remembered.) 

Now Mosley is there getting in shape for a July 25 exhibition at the O2 Arena in London against David Kurzhal, a “lifelong martial artist, natural bodybuilder, actor, screenwriter and popular YouTuber,” according to his IMDb bio.

Although in his 50s, retired for nine years, and five years removed from his induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, Mosley still has the name recognition to make him attractive to organizers of such events.

And even if he feels that he was at his best a couple of years before beating De La Hoya, or that he scored his greatest win several years later, it was that victory over Oscar that made Sugar Shane Mosley a sports celebrity.

“In training camp for the Oscar fight, my father was like, ‘This is your big chance to get on the world platform,’” Mosley recalled. “I was already big on the East Coast; I’d fought there for most of my lightweight title fights. But this was my chance to make it on the West Coast, to beat Oscar in, basically, both our backyards and be the king in California.

“That’s what that fight made me. The king in California.”

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with nearly 30 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.