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JULY 2000
Each month we bring you a selection of articles from the current and past issues of BOXING MONTHLY. To buy the magazine, see our subscription or back issues pages, or use our world distribution map to find a news-stand copy. Why not use our Interactive Forum to express your own boxing comments and opinions!
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SWEET AS YOU LIKE
A stunning performance from Sugar Shane Mosley has left erstwhile Golden Boy Oscar De La Hoya wondering what the future might hold for him. GRAHAM HOUSTON reports from ringside in Los Angeles |
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NOT ENOUGH: De La Hoya's pressure faded as the fight went on, and Mosley Came firing back
- Get Big Pic In a wonderfully compelling fight that was decided on the 12th and final
round, Sugar Shane Mosley dug deep and outpunched Oscar De La Hoya over the last
three, thrilling minutes to capture the world welterweight championship on a
split but richly deserved decision at the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles
on 17 June. The undefeated Mosley, 28, showed he is a worthy bearer of the Sugar moniker
as he follows the two Rays, Robinson and Leonard, both outstanding champs in the
147lbs (10st 7lbs) division who went on to conquer other, heavier weight
classes. Mosley, in scoring his 35th consecutive victory (32 KOs) answered all the
questions that had been raised before the fight. He showed that he is indeed a legitimate, strong welterweight in only his
third fight in the division after being a dominant lightweight champion. Mosley also proved he can take a good shot from a legitimate welterweight
banger. De La Hoya, arguably the division's best puncher, landed some wicked
wallops to body and head. But Mosley took them and came back firing. De La Hoya, 27, was aggressive, just as he had promised he would be. He
hardly ever seemed to take a backward step. He kept coming at Mosley, intent on
landing the big punches that would give him the knockout victory that the Golden
Boy had predicted. But Mosley was the quicker, cleverer, more versatile fighter. Although the
shorter man by at least two inches, he often outjabbed the 5ft 11ins De La Hoya. And although De La Hoya seemed to land the more damaging punches, Mosley
delivered plenty of clean, solid blows, especially the right-handers that he
slammed against the head and body of his Los Angeles hometown rival (Mosley
still lives in the suburb of Pomona while De La Hoya, born in East L.A., has
long since moved to more salubrious surroundings). It was one of the best fights I have seen in a long time, between
well-matched fighters. Even though neither was close to being knocked down, hard
hits were taken and given on both sides and there were the shifts in fortune
that make a fight great. De La Hoya looked on the verge of overpowering Mosley in the fifth and sixth
rounds, but then the challenger rallied, winning five of the last six rounds on
my scorecard to take the victory that seemed close but clear: 115-113, or 7-5 in
rounds, in my ringside assessment. There were those who had the margin wider,
although Mosley admitted afterwards that it had been a close contest. The sell-out crowd of 20,744, paying gate receipts that promoter Bob Arum
expected to exceed $6 million, got its money's worth, as did the world-wide
pay-per-view television viewing audience (including Sky's digital service in
Britain). There was a sour note, though, and it came much later in the evening, at the
post-fight press conference, when a terse, unsmiling De La Hoya seemed to be
suggesting that the scoring had somehow been rigged by the boxing industry in
order to set up a lucrative rematch with Mosley. He did not come right out and say it, but the inference was clear. This was a
new, darker side to De La Hoya that many of us had never seen before, an angry
young man indeed. The fact is, De La Hoya lost the fight. I agree with De La Hoya that he did not deserve to lose the much-disputed,
majority to decision in his title fight with Felix Trinidad last September. But
this time, De La Hoya was definitely defeated, even though one of the three
California state judges, Marty Sammon, had the Golden Boy in front by a score of
115-113. But judges Lou Filippo and Pat Russell saw Mosley winning by scores of
116-112 and 115-113 respectively. On consensus scoring (that is, awarding the round to the boxer who gets the
vote of at least two of the three judges), Mosley came out ahead by 115-113, or
7-5 in rounds. But De La Hoya did not see it that way at all. It was as if this winner in
life, with his good looks, his charisma and his multi-million dollar fortune,
cannot bear to be a loser. As if, somehow, a defeat (his second in a 34-fight
career) is something that shouldn't happen. Not to him. With heavy irony, he said: "I didn't knock him out, so I didn't win. It
was a helluva fight, but I didn't knock him out so I didn't win. That's just the
way I feel. I felt it was very close, but, in my mind, when I didn't get the
knockout I said: 'Forget about it.' "I'm going to rethink my career over. I'm considering a lot of
things." Asked if retirement was one of them, he replied: "Definitely." He added: "I'm going to rethink about my whole game plan in life because
we know that this is a business and, of course, people want the rematch, to make
more money, and I don't see it that way. I'm thinking about my health and my
career - my life. I'm a businessman. I take care of my money, and I just want to
take care of my health. That's what's most important for me and my family. When
things like this happen, it turns me off. You start to think: 'What if they do
give me the decision? There's no rematch. There's no third fight.' That's just
the way it is. That's the way I feel. It's tough to live with what goes on
around boxing. I'm just very disappointed with that. Maybe tomorrow I'll feel
differently. I just don't feel as if I can continue on like this. "Of course, fighters always feel very stubborn and keep on going for
more and more and more [fights] - that's why I have to be very careful. That's
why I have to decide where I cross the fine line. Should I just stay back, or
cross it? Because a lot of fighters make a big mistake by staying in boxing too
long. There's life after boxing." Asked if he fought the way he did, by constantly moving in, to please the
critics or because he thought it was a smart fight, he said: "It's a no-win
situation because what happens if I do decide to box Shane Mosley? I'm not going
to get a decision, am I?" He did say: "I take nothing away from Shane. He's a good fighter - great
fighter." But the tone of his comments was unmistakable: that he had, as in
the Felix Trinidad fight, been denied victory by judges who, in his own mind,
had their own agenda. He must temporarily have forgotten that there were plenty of dissenters when
he won decisions over Pernell Whitaker and Ike Quartey (both fights that I
thought De La Hoya won clearly, by the way). His promoter, Bob Arum looked even glummer than after De La Hoya's loss to
Trinidad but within the hour had regrouped sufficiently to tell us: "It was
a great, great evening. Everybody turned out from the L.A. community, Hollywood,
business people. Everybody enjoyed the spectacle. It's really irrelevant how I
scored it. The judges scored it, and that's determinative. I had Oscar ahead,
but I'm obviously prejudiced." Mosley, poised and dignified, said: "It was a great fight. I fought my
heart out, he fought his heart out, and the better man won tonight. The fight
was won basically in the 12th round. We both went to war. Like I said [before
the fight], we were going to go soul-searching in there, and that's what we did. "I was never really hurt in the fight. I got hit with good shots, but I
was never hurt where I wobbled. Oscar was really sharp. He had some nice, sharp
punches. I just had to make sure I had enough energy to close the show like I
did in the 12th round." Asked how he felt about the split decision, he said: "I felt that I
outpointed him; I felt that I did a great job, and that's all that matters to
me. This takes my career to another level: people know now that Sugar Shane is
for real, and he is a true warrior. I'm a welterweight and I can take a
welterweight punch. I faced one of the biggest punchers in the welterweight
division and I took a lot of shots from him, and gave my own." A rematch is just fine as far as Mosley is concerned although he said that
he, his promoter, Cedric Kushner, and the De La Hoya side will have to sit down
and work out the details. It would be one of the most eagerly anticipated return fights in modern ring
history. Lou DiBella, until recently the boxing czar at Home Box Office, came up to
the press tables after the fight to say: "It's a long time since I've seen
a fight with the skill level that high. This could be the start of a three-fight
series, with not always the same winner." Everyone who saw the fight, on-site or on the screen, no doubt would be
equally as excited about the prospect of Mosley and De La Hoya going at each
other again. The rounds were so intense that they seemed to fly by. Although Mosley seemed
to get as many boos as cheers when he was introduced, his spirited, skilled
fighting brought chants of "Mosley, Mosley" from a section of the
packed crowd, to be answered by chants of "Oscar, Oscar." Although De La Hoya was the 2-1 on betting favourite in Las Vegas, almost
everyone in the fight fraternity saw this as a very difficult fight in which to
pick a winner. But the expectation was high that the showdown billed as
"Destiny" would prove to be memorable. So it was. Mosley came out fast and made a statement by rattling De La Hoya with quick,
snappy right hands to win the opening round on the scorecards of all three
judges. But De La Hoya began to find the range for his noted left hook in the
second, and Mosley switched briefly to a southpaw stance Ð a move he was to
repeat three times before the fight was over. "A lot of people don't know that I can fight southpaw as well,"
Mosley said afterwards. "I noticed Pernell Whitaker gave him a lot of
problems [with his southpaw style], so I thought: 'Let me try it and see what
happens.' And it kinda changed his fight pattern a little bit, because he didn't
know what to do." But he said he made sure he didn't stay southpaw long
enough for De La Hoya to adjust to the shift. The early rounds saw the advantage go first to one, then to the other. Just
when you thought one man was taking charge, so the other would surge back. Some of De La Hoya's body blows landed with resounding whacks, but Mosley
often boxed beautifully and he was able to land the right hand with some
consistency, although De La Hoya indicated to referee Lou Moret a couple of
times in the fight that he was being hit on the back of the head. It was noticeable as the fight progressed, though, that Mosley was the more
flexible fighter, moving and boxing before making sudden attacks in which he
scored to body and head. But around the middle of the fight, De La Hoya seemed to be well on the way
to winning. Mosley appeared to be slowing down. De La Hoya confidently raised a
glove to the crowd as he went to his corner. Mosley landed a big right in the
seventh, but De La Hoya took it well and was again the pursuer. In the eighth, though, Mosley frustrated De La Hoya with his quickness,
movement and a switch to the southpaw posture. De La Hoya continued to move in
but without the same certitude of some of the earlier rounds. His trainer,
Roberto Alcazar, frantically signalled to De La Hoya to increase the pressure.
But, in this eighth round, for the first time it was as if doubt had entered De
La Hoya's mind. It was Mosley's round and he knew it, raising both arms at the
bell. "I changed the tempo a little bit by giving him angles," Mosley
said afterwards. "Boxing a little bit, punching, boxing, punching. I think
that was the difference. And then, in the last round, I changed up again and
stayed flat-footed and just fought him. "I knew that it was a good, close fight and anything can happen [in the
scoring]. I wanted to leave my mark, in the 12th round. I wanted to show the
world who was the stronger and the better fighter in the 12th round." He did, too. Jack Mosley, the new champion's father and trainer, said that before the
start of the final round he told his son: "Shane, we've got to close this
show and we have to make a statement here tonight." He added: "In so many words, I told him: 'You've gotta go out there and
fight him.' And he went out there and fought him. I told Shane: 'No matter what
happens, I love you and I think you did a good job and I think you've won the
fight.'" If De La Hoya had won the 12th round, the champion would have kept his World
Boxing Council title (the International Boxing Association belt was at stake,
too) with a draw. Father and son could not have known that Sugar Shane needed
the last round to win the fight. But they left nothing to chance and Mosley
produced the greatest, most important, three minutes of his fighting life. Whether or not there will be a return fight - with November the likely month
if there is - was not known as this issue was being prepared for press. My guess is that De La Hoya will go for the rematch, after he has had time
for reflection. De La Hoya has nothing to be ashamed of about his performance. He showed
heart, a good chin and a willingness to go in and fight that was missing from
his display against Felix Trinidad. That night, he ran away in the last few
rounds. This time, he gave it his all. On this evening of passion and drama, De La Hoya was good. But Mosley was
better. |
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