Sugar on Top

Boxing has been known to shake a million bucks loose from a fighter in roughly the time it takes to loosen your tie.

The sweet science can strip-mine a guy, debase and low-blow him--turn a teen-age dream into a teary TV biopic.

Is this what awaits Shane Mosley?

Anything is possible--which blood sport doesn’t love a challenge?--but no one is taking bets yet in Pomona.

To get Shane, the snakes must slither off the San Bernardino freeway, shimmy past the 30-foot high banner of the fighter planted outside the local Denny’s--Shane’s dad cut a deal with the restaurant’s owner--then side-wind through sprawl more resembling Pleasantville than Palookaville.

Here, in the Ganesha Hills, residents are on neighborhood watch--a cadre of Gladys Kravitzes peeping out through Venetian blinds.

It took a village to raise this welterweight champion--Mom, Pop, Junior Police commanders, a dog, the mailman, band directors--so it’s important the belly-crawlers know what they’re up against.

Foremost, at Pomona’s front porch, stand Jack and Clemmie Mosley.

Jack is Shane’s dad and trainer, a man with a toothy grin and ham hocks for forearms.

Clemmie is Shane’s straight-shootin’ mom.

“I’m the ‘No,’ person,” she says.

Jack and Clemmie, married 34 years, live in the house they bought in 1972 for $19,500.

Shane may be, pound for pound, the most harbored champion in history.

Kid Cul de Sac.

The plan is to keep it this way, but now comes the tricky part.

Mosley’s split-decision victory over Oscar De La Hoya on June 17 at Staples Center catapulted Shane into rarefied air--some are comparing Sugar Shane to the all-time great “Sugars.”

“It’s always dangerous to place a boxer’s position in history until his career is over,” Nigel Collins, editor of Ring magazine, says. “But as far as his status right now within boxing, he went from star to superstar.”

After toiling for years as a mismanaged gem--one of his cards drew 504 paying fans at the Pond of Anaheim--Mosley has entered a new tax bracket.

He earned $4.5 million plus a pay-per-view percentage for his victory over De La Hoya and his purse figures to double for the proposed January rematch.

The weeks since DLH have been nothing short of whirlwind, kicking off with a “Tonight Show” appearance.

“I was more nervous for that than fighting,” Mosley says of his rumble with Jay Leno. “Fighting’s a breeze.”

In New York, Ring crowned Mosley the world’s best “pound-for-pound” fighter.

Mosley, who once augmented his boxing earnings by working day jobs at Kmart and Big 5--picture a young Oscar De La Hoya selling you a fishing rod--has crossed the rope-a-dope Rubicon.

“When they see the face now, they stop and look,” Mosley says of his public forays.

Town leaders threw a parade. You should have seen it, Mosley riding down Temple Avenue on a vintage red fire engine, flanked by Miss Pomona and her court, Mayor Eddie Cortez handing Shane the key to the city.

Mosley even earned an invite to the Jackson family ranch. Michael and Janet were not in the house, but Shane did hobnob with Tito and Jermaine and other guests--Gary Coleman, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Mike Tyson.

Tyson stunned Mosley when he gushed with almost “Teen Beat” giddiness, “Wow, there’s Sugar Shane!”

“I saw this guy on a Wheaties box,” Mosley says of Tyson. “And now he’s coming up to me?”

NO ONE HIT WONDER

If you believe all boxing roads lead to despair, destruction and Don King, then Shane Mosley is at a crossroads.

“He’s never seen the real world,” Clemmie says on her front porch. “Shane’s always been sheltered right here in this house. He’ll see people for what they really are. It will be an eye opener.”

Success came late to Mosley, and you could call this make-up time.

Though their careers have paralleled, De La Hoya has earned $100 million more in purses than Mosley, a real hoot when you consider Mosley is 2-0 against Oscar, counting that long-ago sparring victory at Pasadena’s Villa Park Recreation Center.

There is no way to explain the disparity other than to chalk it up to a sport in which who you know is more important than what you throw.

Imagine Tiger Woods being denied entry to major tournaments until he turns 25.

Well, it took Mosley that long to get a shot at the International Boxing Federation lightweight title, which he won and defended eight times.

As they say over at the IBF, c’est le fee.

An Olympic gold medal at the 1992 Barcelona Games launched De La Hoya into superstardom.

But because he’d lost his Olympic trials semifinal match the same year to Vernon Forrest, Mosley had to queue up at the cab stand.

De La Hoya locked on to Bob Arum, one of boxing’s three-headed circus rings.

Mosley drew short straw with Patrick Ortiz and shadow-boxed beneath the radar until his contract expired in 1996, when second-banana Cedric Kushner picked up the promotional pieces.

“We were a wonderful match,” Kushner says. “I needed him and his talent as much as he needed me to take him to the next level.”

Overnight success?

It took Mosley 294 fights--260 as an amateur--to reach this plateau.

“I was in the music business,” Kushner says. “There used to be groups traveling around the countryside, playing small venues, selling three or four thousand albums. They had a nice little following and, suddenly, on their sixth album, they have two hits, sell 2 million copies and suddenly would be discovered by a whole new group of people.”

Ladies and gentlemen, “Shane Mosley and the Belt-tones!”

CITIZEN SHANE

Boxing annals are rife with stories of fighters who got sucker-punched by success, one-hit wonder Buster Douglas probably best fitting the description.

Jack Mosley says, give or take $100 million, it all worked out fine.

“Maybe he wasn’t ready for all that fame and glory,” Jack says. “It could be a blessing, because we took our time, we got mentally tough, we took the slow road.”

Shane says that’s a crock.

“I could have handled it just as well when I was 20 or 21,” he says. “Money was not the big issue. The big deal was being the greatest, pound for pound, and being recognized in the history books as one of the great ‘Sugars.’ ”

Don’t expect Mosley to end up hocking his title belt on eBay.

Unlike Tyson, society’s poster boy for dysfunction, Mosley has been enveloped by infrastructure.

Success? Gone to his head?

Avarice hasn’t yet advanced as far as Shane’s shoulders.

Upon arrival for an interview, a reporter found Mosley and some buddies trying to fix Shane’s car.

When the reporter suggested Shane junk the heap and buy a couple of Ferraris and a Jag, Mosley was incredulous.

“If I don’t use it, I won’t buy it,” Mosley said. “What I have, it’s because I need it.”

Imagine that.

Mosley’s home is shockingly modest for someone of his financial girth--no circular driveway, no security gates, no henchmen ringing golden gongs.

Get this: Mosley has no plans yet to raze a hillside to erect Xanadu in the Inland Empire, or even take his act east to Cucamonga.

“I like it here in Pomona, and not just because my parents are here,” he says. “I have a lot of memories here, a lot of friends. I’ve been all around the world--the world is my home--but it’s an advantage to have your parents and loved ones around you.”

Welterweight champion or ghostwriter for Hallmark cards?

You make the call.

KEEPING IT REAL

So what kind of big, bad boxing saga is this?

Where are the creeps in gold chains?

Until three years ago, Mosley, 28, lived in the garage his parents had converted into an extra bedroom. Clemmie insisted the add-on not include a separate bathroom so guests would have to pass through main quarters for inspection and relief.

Clemmie proudly recalls the intestinal fortitude this required of Shane’s late-night callers.

Shane eventually flew the coop. Yep, after a year in far-off Fontana, he built a new house around the corner from his parents’. When Mosley is away, the postman knows to drop Shane’s mail into his parents’ box.

Before fights, it is not uncommon for neighbors to leave “Good-luck-Shane” notes on his parents’ porch.

The night Mosley beat De La Hoya, friends toilet-papered Shane’s home--now if that isn’t the ultimate act of suburban mischief.

Shane can’t sneeze in Pomona without it getting back to Clemmie.

A few weeks ago, her phone rang.

“I saw somebody cruising by,” one of Shane’s neighbors reported to Clemmie.

It is Mosley, not Tyson, who best speaks to Horatio Alger.

Mosley’s is a story about a kid and his dog; of a mom and dad who, brick by brick, laid the family foundation; of a family that (so far) has tried to figure out how best not to squander a fortune.

Clemmie has gone hoarse lecturing Shane.

“You hear about all these stories,” Clemmie says. “The Don King stories. You hear about Muhammad Ali. You wonder how it happened to all these people. How did their families let it happen? How could Tyson owe the IRS money?”

Jack and Clemmie envision a different tomorrow.

Cash prizes earned by Mosley Inc. have been put in an open trust.

“We get checks, just like we had jobs,” says Jack who, as Shane’s trainer, receives a purse percentage. “We want to live on the interest, never touch the principal. We don’t let money control us. We control the money. It becomes the root of all evil when it controls you.

“Money was never a problem for us. We did not lack for anything. We had time shares in Laguna, Palm Springs, Big Bear.

“We had the same amount of fun a millionaire had.”

IN THE BEGINNING

Marvin Smith, one of Mosley’s publicists, offered a reason Shane won’t slip into pugilistic purgatory.

“The apple didn’t fall far from the tree,” he said.

The Mosley tree took root in Watts, hardly the template for 1960s stability. Visions of the Watts riots still flicker.

“I was in the midst of all those flames,” Jack says. “I remember waking up and there being flames everywhere. National Guard. Fire trucks.”

But Jack says Watts was not the place depicted on the nightly news.

“It was not a bad community. I had a great time growing up.”

Jack’s dad, Robert, was a union representative who knew the value of punching a clock.

Jack boxed as an amateur but says he was a better gymnast, still proud of his ability to scale a rope, floor to ceiling, in 3.5 seconds.

But his future was in the ring, not rings.

Jack: “How many black guys you know in gymnastics?

What Jack passed on to Shane, his theories on “power boxing,” he learned on the streets.

“It was an honor to see how good you were,” he says of neighborhood scrapes. “Now, they just shoot each other.”

Jack and Clemmie attended Jordan High School together and married in 1966.

Shane and his two older sisters, Venus and Cerena, were born in Los Angeles.

In 1972, the family moved to Pomona.

For 27 years, Jack worked as a materials manager at USC Medical Center while Clemmie spent most of that time as an account analyst for General Dynamics.

Thanks to Shane, both have taken early retirement.

Jack didn’t mind raising his kids among the grove trees, but neither did he want them to forget the city.

On trips into L.A., Jack purposely took side streets to show his son the seedier element.

“You’d see all kinds,” Jack says. “I’d look at Shane and point out stuff, just so he knew.”

A month before Shane turned 9, Jack quit smoking and started a workout regimen at Pomona’s Second Street gym.

Clemmie sent Shane along, hoping her hyperactive son would burn some energy.

“He did not require a lot of sleep,” Clemmie says of her son. “In nursery school, we bought him a Big Wheel. He rode it around while everyone was napping.”

Once, while Shane was a first-grader at St. Joseph’s Elementary School, Sister Agnes phoned.

“He’s not acting up,” the sister told Clemmie. “You think he’s sick?”

With his pockets stuffed with marbles, Shane combed the playgrounds of Pomona, dog Starlight always in tow.

But life changed at Second Street when Shane fell in love with a speed bag.

“It’s an art form,” he says of boxing. “Being a boxer defines you as a person. When you step into the ring, it’s about your character. I like to outthink people, outwit them.”

Within months, young Shane was already sugar on the cane, decking fighters with years’ more experience.

Father and son fight teams are normally disasters-in-waiting--there are tombstones to verify this--but Jack and Shane have been different.

“I never pushed him,” Jack says over his fruit plate at Denny’s, where Jack is a sought-out celebrity. “I didn’t need to live no dream through Shane. And I always knew where he was. He was not in the streets, because he was working with me every day.

“At least I kept him out of trouble. If there were gangs, I was there to see it. Kids would come around and we’d say, ‘We’re going to the gym, you want to come?’ Or we’d say ‘We’re going to church, you want to come?’ I haven’t seen many gang members who want to go to church.”

Mosley never talked about his boxing at school.

At Pomona High, he played saxophone in the school band for two years. He knew where trouble was and how to avoid it.

“They knew who I was and they knew I wasn’t about that,” Mosley says of the gang element. “And they knew my father was very protective.

“I knew boxing was it. I wasn’t a square. I was never a square. I was everywhere. I could hang out with gangsters or preppy kids, it didn’t matter. I was just an average guy.”

Not in the ring.

There, he was a prodigy, going 250-10 as an amateur while winning three national championships.

Clemmie grudgingly accepted her son’s gift.

She has attended only one of his fights, Shane’s 9-year-old debut.

“Oh, my God, it was a weird feeling,” she says. “He won, but I couldn’t tell.”

Never again.

Clemmie will trek to Shane’s fight venues, but spends the night pacing the hotel.

“I know there are three minutes a round,” she says. “I walk around and count the minutes.”

Clemmie is not a fan of the boxing “scene.”

“I don’t want Shane to get hurt and I don’t want Shane to hurt anybody, either,” she says.

Afterward, Clemmie watches all of Shane’s fights on videotape.

For the record, her VCR is 35-0.

“I always knew Shane was good,” she says.

DIAMOND IS FOREVER

No life is seamless, and Shane has known heartbreak and angst.

When he was 16, the car he was driving blew a tire and flipped in Rancho Cucamonga, killing his 3-year-old nephew, Diamond Johnson.

Diamond was Venus’ son, Jack and Clemmie’s first grandchild. Clemmie left a church function early that day because she’d had a premonition.

She arrived home to receive the horrible news.

The accident wasn’t Shane’s fault, but that knowledge didn’t help plug the hole in his heart.

“That was really the first death in our family,” Clemmie says. “Shane was 13 when [Diamond] was born. They were like buddies.”

Shane put a pair of his prized boxing gloves in Diamond’s casket.

Clemmie took Shane to a psychologist, but he seemed to handle the tragedy better than others.

Shane and Venus remain close.

“She knew it wasn’t my fault,” Shane says. “Had I done something careless, maybe I’d blame myself. But it was a mechanical thing. The car flipped over. There was nothing I could do.”

Shane received another jolt after high school when his girlfriend, Tina Smith, became pregnant and gave birth to Shane Jr.

Not only did Shane take responsibility--”If it’s my son, I’m going to take care of him; my father instilled that in me”--he also won custody of the boy.

BRING IT ON HOME

So much to do, so little time.

Mosley is itching to etch his name in lore.

If he wins the De La Hoya rematch, Mosley can control his boxing destiny. Holder only of the World Boxing Council belt, he can move to unify the welterweight division.

There is also a stable of junior welterweights--Kostya Tszyu, Zab Judah, Randall Bailey, Antonio Diaz--who could jump up and challenge Mosley at 147 pounds.

“That’s where the big money fights are, guys moving up,” Ring’s Nigel Collins says.

Mosley may also pursue a rematch against rising welterweight Vernon Forrest, the man who knocked him out of the 1992 Games.

It was De La Hoya’s decade, for sure, but 2000 is looking more like the start of the Mosley era.

If Shane hits the mother lode, Jack promises to take a chunk of the money and rebuild Pomona.

“I won’t go broke, don’t get me wrong,” Jack says, “but I would set up foundations. This city is just not with it. It’s like a lotus flower, waiting to bloom. I’d do something here. I want to make this entire town like Westwood, make it safe enough to walk your dog down the street.”

Maybe this is just spin.

“You have to know yourself, know what you want, know what life’s about,” Shane says.

And that would be . . . ?

“I want to be a great mentor for the young,” Shane says. “I like to watch kids have a good time, grow up and watch dreams come true. I want to put back into the city where I came from and help the kids.”

Maybe, in the end, boxing’s evil twin walks away another clear-cut winner.

Or maybe, if luck holds and Jack and Clemmie hold steady on the porch, it won’t stand a puncher’s chance.