Fighting On

It was supposed to be a pleasant trip to the zoo for 16-year-old Shane Mosley and his 3-year-old nephew, Diamond Johnson.

When heavy rains came, it turned ugly.

When a nail caused one of the tires of Mosley’s car to blow out, it turned tragic.

The car flipped over in Rancho Cucamonga and Diamond was killed.

Mosley, now 28, emerged without any lasting physical damage, but the emotional damage was something else.

“There was no reason to blame himself because it wasn’t his fault,” said Mosley’s mother, Clemmie.

In such cases, reason doesn’t often rule.

It could have been a turning point in Mosley’s life. A potentially brilliant boxing career hung in the balance, a career that will reach its peak at Staples Center on Saturday night, when Mosley faces Oscar De La Hoya in a welterweight title match.

Mosley first laced the gloves on when he was 8. It was his mother’s idea. Watching her overly energetic son whirl around the house, she suggested to her husband, Jack, that he take Shane with him to the Pomona gym where he worked out.

For Shane, it was love at first blow.

Unlike most kids, who wince and often cry the first time they get a taste of leather in their mouth, he reveled in the challenge and the competition.

At 9, he won regional tournaments in USA and Golden Gloves competition. At 15, he won a junior national title.

His confidence grew.

In his first days in the ring, he was given the nickname Sugar. He soon met the man who first made that nickname universally known, Sugar Ray Robinson.

“You have to be good to be a Sugar,” Robinson told him.

“Well, I’m good,” Mosley said.

But then came the accident.

“Diamond flew out of the car,” said Mosley, the seemingly perpetual smile leaving his face as he spoke softly on a backyard porch at his training headquarters in the San Bernardino Mountains.

“I hit my head and was dazed, but more emotionally than physically. I had dust in my mouth and eyes. My neck was hurting. I felt like I was suffocating.

“But I knew the accident wasn’t my fault.”

Fortunately for Mosley, he had a strong family to turn to for sustenance. His father Jack, has been his manager/trainer throughout his career as well as his best friend. Shane is also extremely close with his mother as well as his two sisters, Venus, who was Diamond’s mother, and Cerena.

Mosley had a Golden Gloves fight scheduled for the week after the accident. Even though his neck was hurting and his mind was numb, he went through with the match and won.

“Every time he got hit in the head,” Jack said, “his neck ached. But things happen. You’ve got to deal with it. You never forget. You always remember. But you reevaluate and reset your goals.”

Mosley said he never stops thinking of Diamond.

“I feel like he made me the fighter I am today,” Shane said. “I feel he probably sees me right now. He’s watching over me. There are spirits, angels, so many things you don’t see.”

Clemmie is happy to hear that her son has finally started talking about the accident.

“If he is willing to speak about it,” she said, “it means he’s able to get it out in the open. That’s good.”

While the accident was certainly the most traumatic event in Mosley’s life, it also ushered in his most difficult period.

He had a son, Shane, Jr., and went through a difficult custody battle with the child’s mother, Tina Smith, whom he never married. He won full custody.

Through it all, Shane kept winning, victorious in his first 33 amateur fights.

Then came the 1992 Olympics.

“That was big to my father,” he said, “but not big to me. I wanted to be a professional world champion. I thought the Olympics was just so much politics.

“OK, I’m fighting for my country, but what am I going to get out of this?”

As it turned out, nothing.

Mosley lost a decision to Vernon Forrest and failed to make the Olympic squad.

No problem, he now says.

“I felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders,” he said. “I could get on with my life and do what I wanted to do.”

But he soon learned the cost of losing a chance for Barcelona gold.

While De La Hoya, Mosley’s longtime Los Angeles-area rival, came back from the Olympics as the Golden Boy, a gold-medal winning, headline-grabbing, high-profile performer from the day he signed a professional contract, Mosley found himself fighting in De La Hoya’s shadow.

Mosley was successful within the ropes from the start. He won his professional debut, beating Greg Puente at the Hollywood Palladium on Feb. 11, 1993 on a fifth-round knockout, and never slowed down.

But while De La Hoya had the powerful machinery of promoter Bob Arum’s Top Rank organization behind him, Mosley struggled to slug his way into the spotlight under promoter Patrick Ortiz.

Finally, when Mosley’s contract with Ortiz ran out, things began to happen. Mosley signed with Cedric Kushner, a major promoter, and, in less than a year, won the International Boxing Federation lightweight title via a 1997 decision over Philip Holiday.

Mosley successfully defended his title eight times. Then, with his body growing while his career stagnated, he took what some viewed as a big gamble, jumping up two weight classes to 147 pounds.

He made his welterweight debut against Wilfredo Rivera, a perennial contender who had never been knocked out, even by De La Hoya in their 1997 fight.

Never until Sept. 25, 1999.

On that night, at the Pechanga Entertainment Center, Mosley knocked out Rivera in the final round of a 10-round match. In January, Mosley got a third-round TKO victory over welterweight Willy Wise.

Now comes De La Hoya.

Mosley flashes that big smile when people question how he’ll handle the pressure of the biggest fight of his life in a world spotlight.

“This is nothing,” he said. “This is a walk in the park compared to what I went through during that difficult period in my life.”

Besides, he figures, there is nothing to worry about as long as Diamond is watching over him.