Not in the Same Class

Not in the Same Class In following the sport of boxing, fans get well acquainted with all sorts of different personalities and types of people. To succeed in boxing, or most professional sports, it takes a minimum amount of ego and self- confidence. Fighting in the spotlight and making it to the upper levels of the sport can inflate those attributes in some, while others are able to keep themselves in check. This past September, two prominent fighters again proved which side of the coin they are on. Sugar Shane Mosley is one of the greatest fighters of his era. His accomplishments are too plentiful to list in this space, but include legitimate titles at three weight classes from lightweight to junior middleweight. He notched two wins over Oscar De La Hoya and Fernando Vargas to go along his victories over other noteworthy names, such as Antonio Margarito, Ricardo Mayorga, Jesse James Leija, Phillip Holiday and others. Time and again, Mosley has also proved to be one of the great class acts in boxing. Paulie Malignaggi has proven himself to be a world class boxer, but he has usually tripped up at the elite level. His accomplishments can be listed in this space. Malignaggi ran up an unbeaten record against the usual suspects into a junior welterweight title fight against world class Miguel Cotto. In that fight, Malignaggi surprised many by showing incredible heart and lasting the distance. Two fights later, Malignaggi picked up a title against Lovemore Ndou and made three successful defenses before losing to Ricky Hatton. Malignaggi split two with undersized, but world class Juan Diaz, losing the first one controversially, and then was completely outclassed by Amir Khan. Time and again, Malignaggi’s emotions have got the best of him at inopportune times, which has precluded him from consideration for the class act label outside of the ring. A glaring occasion in the recent past was his post-fight temper tantrum after the loss to Hatton, which was beamed nationally by HBO. Soon after that fight, his trainer Buddy McGirt, who stopped the uncompetitive fight, was thrown under the bus. Another event to point to would be Malignaggi’s “Boxing is full of shit” rant after the loss to Diaz, which also aired on HBO. Mosley has had to deal with very public setbacks, but has managed to do so in a professional manner. Mosley parted ways with his father/trainer Jack Mosley twice, but you would be hard pressed to find any quotes from Sugar Shane blasting his father. Quite the contrary, Mosley has repeatedly given his father credit for shaping him into the fighter that he has become. There was BALCO and a divorce from his wife/manager Jin Mosley. Shane never took the easy way out and blamed a conditioning coach for the BALCO scandal, nor can I recall him publicly tearing down his ex-wife. Recently, Malignaggi exercised his ego and emotions again by blasting his former promoter Lou DiBella shortly after signing with Golden Boy Promotions. DiBella was the promoter that steered Malignaggi’s career from its infancy and somehow managed to get a light-hitting, trash talker with brittle hands eight fights on premium cable and two fights against money players, i.e. Cotto and Hatton. The public digs at DiBella would be surprising had they come from another source, but for Malignaggi it seems par for the course. On the other side of the coin last month was Shane Mosley. The vast majority of experts and critics believed Mosley was wronged when three California judges scored his fight with Sergio Mora a draw. It would not have been out of line for Mosley to claim he felt he had won the fight, but it would have been out of character. Even weeks later, with public sentiment clearly in his favor, Mosley refused to trash the decision when the fight was brought up with him at the commentators’ desk during a Fox Sports Net telecast. It may not be fair to Malignaggi to hold him to the standard of a Shane Mosley. There are not many fighters today that would look favorable when compared to one of the more genuine class acts the sport has seen over the years. It is a bar few could attain with such longevity, but it is one that should be strived for. If more fighters attempted to duplicate Mosley’s example, our sport would be much better off. Photo by Tom Hogan/Golden Boy Promotions Mario Ortega Jr. can be reached at [email protected]..

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