Shane Mosley fought as a professional on 61 occasions, taking on some of boxing’s best operators between the lightweight and super-welterweight division. Although, there are two names that stick out to Mosley as opponents he could easily have swerved.
‘Sugar’ Shane Mosley competed for 23 years as a professional after turning over as an amateur standout, famously moving on from his lightweight reign to dethrone welterweight ruler, Oscar De La Hoya, and then repeating the feat up at super-welterweight when he trumped ‘Golden Boy’ for a second time.
Although, over the course of his legendary career, Mosley would pick up 10 career defeats and in an interview with FightHype, the Californian admitted that his desire to be the best was a key reason why, noting how other fighters would have swerved Ronald ‘Winky’ Wright.
“[My mentality was], if I am not the best fighter then find somebody to beat me, because I don’t want to be the world champion if I am not the best. I don’t want it, if I am not the best, I want to be the best. I didn’t ask for more money, I didn’t care about none of that.
“As a kid, I wanted to be great, I wanted to be like Sugar Ray Leonard and Muhammad Ali. That was my destiny.My destiny is not money or contracts or whatever else. That is why I fought people that shouldn’t have fought at certain times, I wasn’t picking my fights.
“It was like ‘Winky [Wright]? Don’t nobody want to fight him? Okay, I will fight him’, I wasn’t even a 154lber, I was a 147lber, ‘I will fight you because nobody else wants to fight you’. Then Winky goes on to fight [Felix] Trinidad and other people and he gets his chance in the sun.”
Defensive mastermind Wright twice trumped Mosley in 2004, and Mosley also recalled how he could have avoided fights with the only other man to beat him twice, Vernon Forrest.
“Vernon Forrest, same thing. I didn’t have to fight him. I could have went on and avoided and danced around. Then he went on and lost to [Ricardo] Mayorga.”
Regardless of those defeats, Mosley was inducted into International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2020, alongside fellow greats Bernard Hopkins and Juan Manuel Marquez.