29.06.06 – Jack Mosley: When Shane came up, he had speed. I called it speed boxing. Speed and power. That’s what it is. We don’t go in looking for a knockout. If it comes, it comes. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. We will out-box him, out-point him and out-power him…in every category. It will be a different fight altogether..
Jack Mosley: I started Shane out when he was eight years old and my methods will be the same. They are winning methods. He has won national tournaments and titles. Shane, they always say, is a three-time world champion. He is a five time world champion. He won two titles off Oscar each time he fought Oscar, the WBC and the IBA then the WBC and the WBA. He also won the IBF. So he’s a five-time world champion in three different weight classes. I want to make that clear because he is not getting his just do. I just think he needs credit for that accomplishment.
Jack Mosley: My training methods – Danny has seen some of them but not everything. He has been up in camp with Ishay, but I have some other things I have implemented that is going to make a difference in this fight coming up with Vargas.
So there will be some changes?
Jack Mosley: It will be the same – it is just some things that have been added. I am just adding, not changing stuff. I am making sure Shane can do what Shane can do best. He has the capabilities to do what he has done in the past. Some people say, “he is 34 years old,” – Shane is still confident and strong and can still do some things out there and I am bringing it all out again.
Do you think there will be pressure on you since he won the first fight?
Jack Mosley: Well, you know what, Shane is going to win the fight. There is no question about it. I am not thinking about what people are going to say what they say and I know what I’ve got in Shane. Like I said, he is a five-time world champion in three different weight classes and I was a part of that – Shane and I did that together. I don’t care what they think. I already know what I did, I started Shane from scratch. How many trainers can say they started a fighter from scratch and gotten those accomplishments? Not too many, I say. There are some, but not too many. So I don’t care what they say. I already know what I did. And I don’t need anybody to tell me. And I don’t need any praise from anyone either. I already know what I did – in my own head.
When you got together with Shane to come back, did you discuss parameters?
Jack Mosley: There was nothing to talk about. He asked me if I would train him and I said “Fine.”
Did he say why he wanted you to train him again?
Jack Mosley: John is training Bernard Hopkins, so what better person to have than the one who started him out?
One thing we noticed was that Shane was not throwing the combinations, did you notice that?
Jack Mosley: Yeah, yeah. I know the reason why he did it and how it happened, too. All of the things that have caused it to happen, we have eliminated.
Can you tell us what?
Jack Mosley: I don’t want to say what it was. I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes.
Is there a different feeling when you are in the corner with your son than anyone else?
Jack Mosley: My son is my son more than anything else. I try to do the same thing with all of my fighters – preparation for fights, taking care of them physically, mentally and I just try to do what I can and treat them as a human being to make sure they are the best they can be while they are out there. I don’t just throw my fighters to the wolves, if I can prevent that, I don’t care who the fighter is. I try to give him a better than 50% chance to win a fight. That’s how I train my fighters.
Did you always want Shane to be a boxer?
Jack Mosley: That was Shane’s idea, to box. ‘Dad, I want to box, I can do this.’ I had him in karate and things like that. He was good a karate, too. But then the funds ran out and I was at the gym training and trying to lose weight and he would tag along and I brought him with me because I had to keep an eye on him and he wanted to box. And he wanted to be a world champion and he loved it with a passion and that’s what you’ve got to do. Love it with a passion and work with a passion and that’s what I told him.
What did you tell him when he went in a different direction?
Jack Mosley: Sometimes in life people need to do things on their own and stuff. Like when he wanted to play basketball and he wanted to play football and I said go ahead, it’s good for your boxing. You want to make changes and see what you can do and what you can’t do and that’s kind of what it was besides other things. But the bottom line is he is here and we are going to do it again. We are going to work hard and kick some but out there and make history.
In looking at the Mayweather’s, could you ever imagine training a fighter to fight your son?
Jack Mosley: I wouldn’t do it. I absolutely would not do it. I don’t love money that bad. I would never train somebody to beat my blood up. Because after the fight you still have to fellowship with your some and things like that – it’s your family. You can’t have a problem like that at Christmas and other holidays – that’s crazy, that’s your family. I would never do that.
Could you define ‘power boxing?’
Jack Mosley: Instead of calling it ‘boxer, puncher’ I just combined the two and decided to call it ‘power boxing.’ We’ll just box the guy with power and speed. There is still speeed there but it is ‘power boxing.’ And you are boxing with power – that is basically what it is.
In this fight – are you going to concentrate on hitting Vargas in the eye?
Jack Mosley: We are going to concentrate on hitting Vargas everywhere we can hit him. Wherever he lets us hit him, we are going to hit him. If he wants us to hit him in the eye again, we’ll hit him in the eye again. If he wants us to hit him in the body – we’ll hit him in the body. There is going to be a spot to hit him. If he blocks the eye, there will be someplace else to hit him, that’s all.
Did you ever stop by the gym as an observer while Shane was being trained by others?
Jack Mosley: No, I was busy training my other fighters.
Do you see things you can implement that you couldn’t when he was younger?
Jack Mosley: I think Shane can do all of the things he could do when he was a younger fighter. He is older, but he’s not an abused fighter. He’s not a fighter that’s been hanging out all night long or every weekend. He takes care of himself. He’s a t the gym, he’s a work-a-holic, he eats good food and takes his vitamins. He’s just not one of those guys that is going to be hanging out. He can do those things he did when he was in his 20’s. I am watching him right now and I know he can do them because he is doing them right now. It is just muscle memory and he is doing those things again.
How difficult was it to stay away from the gym?
Jack Mosley: When Shane was an amateur and had to go to Colorado Springs, they had coaches there that would take him to different places. I wasn’t there, but I knew he knew his craft very well to handle himself with anybody in the corner. Because he is already trained. He knows what to do. What are they going to show him. He’s already won three national titles. All they can say is ‘Shane, be more busy or jab a little more,’ but he already knows how to do everything while he was traveling around the United States with the Olympic team. He already knew what to do.
What about Shane’s style against Vargas?
Jack Mosley: It’s just that he got away from it. So he’s getting back to it. Shane is just as good if not better.
There was talk about your training following the first Forrest fight…
Jack Mosley: I already knew what Shane could do – he just couldn’t do it. There were some other things happening in his life, so he couldn’t do it and I already knew that. People may have known that but it wasn’t their business. Against Vernon there were a lot of distractions, but what are you going to do? When the chemistry is thrown out of whack when you have a good chemistry that is working for you, it messes up everything. That happens to the best of us. I thought he won the rematch against Vernon Forrest and I thought he won the rematch against Winky Wright – even though I wasn’t there I thought he beat Winky Wright. I think right now, the track he is on, he can really do some stuff without those kinds of distractions right now.
Do you have a theory on why father-son combinations don’t work?
Jack Mosley: I think a lot of times the fathers do not allow their sons to grow and they want to live their life through their son. Then you have outside influences – you have people in the fighter’s ear and the father’s ear trying to manage things and manipulate. People that are envious and jealous and they want to break that up. People that are around the camp that don’t want to see it work. But it’s there and there are people that don’t want to see it work. Number one, it is the money – they want the money. I had to save all of my money. I had to save all of my time at my job – vacation time and sick time – and they wouldn’t let me off of work, so that’s why I had to save all of my sick time. It’s like thirteen days that you had to stay every year and that was my vacation every year. Because I am trying to support my son to be the best he can be. People see that and they don’t like it. They are just jealous of it. But then you have fathers who want to live their lives, not all but some, and that is a reason why it doesn’t work. Even people in your family get jealous – they don’t want it to work.
There are a lot of reason why the father-son combinations to not work. They tried it with the Williams sisters and their father, but they were strong enough to stay together. They had a strong bond and didn’t allow anyone to come between them.
There is a lot of money there. There are agents and people that want to manage – it’s all about the money and everybody knows that. They even try to make up a story saying he can’t do the job. But they weren’t there in the beginning. When they are amateurs and go to Colorado Springs and win the title and come back – who’s waiting? The guys with the millions of dollars…and they didn’t train them. What about the guys that train the fighters from scratch. He took four years out of his life to train the kid and he gets nothing. That is sad.
DANNY SMITH
Danny Smith: Fernando is in really, really good shape. Everything is great and we are just waiting for the next couple of weeks to go by.
How do you train for this second fight?
Danny Smith: There are some minor adjustments that have been made. It is hard to say how the outcome – it started in the very first round. It is hard to say how it would have ended if that wasn’t the case. So we don’t make a lot of changes.
Some think Fernando is old because he fought Trinidad and De La Hoya at such a young age…
Danny Smith: It could be true. The problem was he was losing so much weight and it was hard to perform at an “A” level when you have to lose so much weight. Right now his weight is great, maybe 5 ½, 6 lbs. max over his weight. It will not be a problem. The only thing I worry about it is the way he performs like he has been in sparring.
Would you like to do anything different?
Danny Smith: Not really. I would like to pick up his punch count and throw certain punches that we worked on. But as far as the stragey When you box Shane, if you try and stay away from him – he is very fast and very quick and very comfortable with the distance. We have to eliminate the distance and make him fight.
Do you want to comment on the eye in the first fight?
Danny Smith: In the first round of the fight, there was a clinch and there was a head butt. Every time Fernando would get close to engage in a fight, Shane would clinch and he was constantly rubbing his head up against his left eye and kept aggravating the swell.
How do you combat that?
Danny Smith: A lot of it is going to be a lot of measuring. It is something that the referee is going to have to pay attention to – not allowing him to clinch and hold. You have to take points to keep him from doing it.
Why Simi Valley?
Danny Smith: Every time we go to a camp we are isolated. Everything is great. The weight is good. We have very good sparring partners. Fernando never has a problem when it comes to training. Tiger Allen and Nelson Romine are the sparring partners that stand out and they have a lot of speed and similarity to Mosley.
Do you go for the knockout?
Danny Smith: I don’t train a guy for a knockout. I train a guy to win round-by-round. If it ends in knockout great, but we just try to get the victory.
What was Fernando’s weight when he began camp?
Danny Smith: His weight was 175 when I arrived eight weeks ago.
What did he weigh for the r=first fight when camp began?
Danny Smith: It was probably about 187 when I arrived. This will be my fourth fight with Fernando. This is the best weight situation.
I thought Fernando looked as good in the first Mosley fight as he’s looked in several fights…
Danny Smith: Yes, I do believe that. I don’t think he’ll ever be (the Fernando of old), because when you are in those types of fights that he was in and take punishment like he’s taken, it’s great that he can come back from a big fight like Trinidad and not be shot. He’s not shot, but he’s not the same guy of old. He will perform well because Mosley is not a real big guy and Fernando can really put a lot of pressure on a guy like that and be comfortable and we really just can’t wait.
Are you worried that he will be too mindful of the eye?
Danny Smith: No, I don’t think he will be too mindful, as long as he uses the proper defense to keep from being head-butted or being punched.
Is there anything you can do to stop that kind of swelling?
Danny Smith: There is nothing you can do when you have a fighter like that – nothing a trainer or a cutman can do. If you look at the Jermaine Taylor fight – his eye was closed and there was nothing he could do.
What round, you said it was a head-butt and we couldn’t tell at ringside, did that happen?
Danny Smith: The very first round.