Ricardo Mayorga: On a health kick?

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Ricardo Mayorga, who’ll weigh in at 3 p.m. today at Home Depot Center for his Saturday night 154-pound bout with Pomona’s ‘Sugar’ Shane Mosley, is supposedly in great shape -- although, don’t we hear this from every fighter before the bell rings?

Anyway, Mayorga’s Don King-employed publicist, Alan Hopper, almost breathlessly urged the Nicaraguan to tell listeners on a conference call this week how ripped and fit he was.

‘I’ve been training hard for two months,’ Mayorga told the listeners on Monday. ‘I’m already at 158 pounds.’

Mosley, trying his best to generate interest despite his Las Vegas standing as a 9-to-1 favorite in the bout, admitted he’s ‘no shoo-in.’

And his promoter, Ricard Schaefer, also praised how toned the fun-loving, chain-smoking Mayorga looked. But he still smokes, right? ‘He put a cigarette in his mouth,’ Schaefer said of Wednesday’s Los Angeles news conference. ‘But he didn’t light it.’

-- Lance Pugmire