He is 44 years old and you can, if you wish, take aim at his dream, dismiss it as delusion, snipe at him from safe range.
You can do this, but I think it might indicate that you might not have a strong sense of the warrior ethos which resides…no…which overrides common sense in a fighter-spirit like Shane Mosley.
So easy for us to opine, take to Twitter and tell him to move along, find another job, go gently into that night, be thankful for past blessings, and cede the stage. What’s left to prove, you might be tempted to say…
Um..have you really considered how hard it might be for a person unlike you, and me, to cede that stage? To reach the capitulation point, where you are saying that your best days in this arena are gone, never to return? It is a surrender state, and it does not come naturally to the sorts of people who accumulate world title in three different weight classes. So, yeah…Mosley ain’t capitulating.
He’s fighting. Still. He did so on Friday night, in Panama, and he won. A ten rounder, against Patrick Lopez.
I know, I know, some of you have hopped into sniper mode, ready to do a Boxrec pounce on Lopez.
The guy is 37…lost three straight in 2010, to 2011…hasn’t been beating up world beaters as he’s won his last three in a row.
Mosley gets it..he knows the snipers will keep firing. He won’t pretend it doesn’t sometimes annoy him, but usually he uses the chops busting, the hits from the soft bellied boxing media members and the Twitter hulks, to fuel him.
Mosley won via TKO10 in Panama, and I asked him about the outing. “I felt good,” the Cali resident told me. “I never had a cut like that before, it was a new thing to deal with. He head butted me 75 seconds in. No stitches. But I gave a beautiful ten rounds. People will try and diminish it, say he’s a nobody, when he fought in two Olympics and has only been kayoed once. Plus, I took the fight on three weeks notice. So there will be some hating for no reason, from people who didn’t see the fight.”
So they didn’t see his special guest cornermen, Gilberto Mendoza Jr, son of the WBA president Gilberto Mendoza Sr. And also Roberto Duran…
Yep, “Hands of Stone” did trainer duty, as chief second, watched over and offered insights to “Sugar.”
“I have known Duran for years,” Mosley told me. “I’ve been to Panama before, hung out at his restaurant. Duran wants to train me for my next fight, and I think it makes sense. Both those guys were useful in my corner. Duran was telling me to set him up for the big right by waving my left with small jabs. They told me to box him so I didn’t peak too soon. So I sat back the first four to six rounds, and let him come to me, and I just boxed him. Then I came on strong the last rounds to go for the KO. The plan worked perfectly. I didn’t want to end it too soon. I wanted the boxing world to see I can make 147. I can box, I can move, and most importantly, that I can last ten rounds and have endurance. This is the best I’ve been since the Margarito fight (in 2009). I was hurt right after that fight, snowboarding. Then I popped an Achilles. So I think I am in some of the best shape of my life. My girl has me eating raw and juicing organic fruit and veggies every day. And I bought a hyperbaric chamber. Woodsy, I am turning back the clock!”
Snipers will shoot down that assertion. Snipers…haters…you can argue, even, realists.
The odds are not in his favor.
Ah, but who am I to confront his desires with a rude dosage of reality. One life he has to live, my best intel indicates we all have but one life to live. Mosley is a fighter, he’s going to fight, in the ring, and versus the inevitable diminishment of ability. The clock ticks away, his future time on that stage shrinks…but the fighter still remains hungry of heart, though his reflexes have dimmed..his desire, that still seethes in his system, demanding he confound the critics and the inevitability of the cruel passage of time.
