This Sugar Has Bitter Aftertaste

He hasn’t walked out of a ring with his arms raised in more than two years.

He is being paid less than half as much as his opponent for a rematch of a fight he won.

And now, here, in the driveway of his new training camp, 7,000 feet above a world of doubters, the unsweetened aura of Sugar Shane Mosley has been burned into cotton.

Spread out on car hoods were official black T-shirts trumpeting his Sept. 13 fight with Oscar De La Hoya. At the top of those shirts was a single word, a fight theme. Mosley’s people thought it referred only to De La Hoya.

“Redemption,” it read.

“Redemption?” asked Mosley.

“Redemption for us?” asked his father, Jack.

“Buyer beware!” shouted his promoter, Gary Shaw. “It’s going to be nothing but ‘Repeat.’ ... I’m going to be selling, ‘Repeat.’ ... They’ll be out tomorrow morning.”

His team spent the next 30 minutes barking and wincing and complaining about how Sugar Shane Mosley is rich enough, famous enough and needs this fight like he needs another nose flattening.

But later, back on the driveway, the guy who manufactured the T-shirts was smiling.

“Funny,” said David Goldfarb. “But they just came up to me, wanting a bunch of them.”

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Sugar Shane Mosley will stand firmly in denial from here to the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.

But in this year’s most highly anticipated Southern Californian brawl, everyone knows he is the one with the wobbly stance.

Yeah, he beat Oscar De La Hoya at Staples Center in June 2000. But two ensuing losses to Vernon Forrest make him the challenger.

And, yeah, he was once on top of the boxing world as its best pound-for-pound fighter. But questionable marketing and matchmaking decisions have turned him into The Other Guy.

For De La Hoya, still brimming from last fall’s beating of Fernando Vargas, this fight represents just another step in a comeback trail that could certify him as one of boxing’s all-time greats.

For Mosley, who has basically spent three years wandering in the desert, this is where the trail could end.

He had a chance at greatness. He blew it. If he fails in a second chance Sept. 13, he will not be given another one.

Despite his insistent protests otherwise.

“Actually, it will be just another win,” said Mosley. “It will be a big win only because you guys want to see it, see what Sugar Shane has left, what I have inside. It’s for the media, for the fans, to see what Sugar Shane is about. This is for you.”

Squeezed next to Mosley on the edge of a boxing ring inside his garage here, the blustery Shaw couldn’t help himself.

“We go on record today to say Sugar Shane Mosley is dedicating this fight to the media!” he shouted.

And aren’t we tickled?

Of course, all of this is just a way of diverting the fear here that Mosley is no longer quick enough or inspired enough to beat a guy whose best big fight was his last big fight.

“Vargas was too tight, he couldn’t sustain tempo,” Mosley said, explaining away that impressive De La Hoya victory.

About the difference in styles between him and De La Hoya, Mosley was even more direct.

“What I noticed in reviewing in fight films, his foot speed and his hand speed has slowed down just a tad bit,” he said. “He’s getting tagged with more shots. Vargas hit him with a lot of shots, and Vargas is a lot slower than I am.

“I’m a different type of fighter, I don’t think he’s preparing himself for that type of fight.”

Maybe so. But Mosley will also be an older fighter by three years, a heavier fighter by seven pounds and a much more scarred fighter than the fresh-faced Pomona kid who captured the Staples Center fans with his fearlessness.

Instead of stepping from there onto bigger stages against big names, his encores occurred in matchboxes against pugs, until Vernon Forrest resoundingly reminded him what he was missing.

What Don King once said about Bernard Hopkins applies perfectly to Mosley.

“He’s like a man who won the lottery, but lost the ticket.”

Management woes distracted him. Forrest exposed him. It would seem the only thing remaining in this precipitous drop is for De La Hoya to finish him.

He changed management teams twice since his fight with De La Hoya, and says he is happy and comfortable now for the first time since then, but the damage has been done.

This was never more apparent than during the fight negotiations. De La Hoya’s cut, at least $12 million, was so much richer than Mosley’s take that De La Hoya closed the deal by offering Mosley $500,000 of his own money if he won.

It was characterized as a bet, but Mosley won’t have to pay if he loses, so it ended up sounding more like charity.

“It’s my money anyway, I should have got it in the first place,” said Mosley, who will make at least $4.4 million. “[De La Hoya] knew it was wrong.... I felt jobbed. I felt ripped off. I still feel the same way.”

So why take the fight? And please, enough of that stuff about carrying the torch for an ink-stained wretch.

“Legacy, that’s the main thing,” he finally admitted. “This is the fight so everybody knows that Sugar Shane was a great fighter.”

In other words, redemption.

That’s 25 bucks a shirt, Sugar.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com