TALKIN BOXIN
by Howie Reed
September 14, 2003 

LET’s see if I can get this right. “The big brown fox
jumped over the lazy dog because every good boy does good.” “What in hell was that all about ?” “Well I’ve been away from the old keyboard for a week and had to do my warm up e exercises. Would you expect Pavoritti not to warm up before doing Puccini or La Boheme?  Does Barry Bonds not take batting practice? Does Bill Mahan not warm up before a round of golf? The answer’s are yes, yes and no. Bill Mahan doesn’t warm up and that’s why you’ve never heard of him.” But he’s my Brother and this is my column. Onward.

WHERE to begin, “Well how about the beginning?” OK. From Talkin Boxing correspondent in England, “Have just finished watching the Oscar De la hoya v Shane Mosley fight. Now I am looking forward to watching the fight that I didn't see...the fight that the
judges were watching...Because as sure as night
follows day it wasn't the same fight that I watched.
It's rare that 3 judges come to exactly the same
decision in any fight, but to come to exactly the same
WRONG decision must be on par with the coming of the new Messiah......tonight will go down in boxing
history as the night that a good crisp left jab ceased
to be a scoring punch.” The fight, unlike here in the
USA, was shown on FREE live TV. Phil added this PS,
“the fight was shown live in the UK by SKY....and ALL
four ex world champ pundits gave it to Oscar by
varying margins between 118-112...Pal it wasn’t even
close.”

A British website headed it’s story “Golden Boy
Fleeced in Vegas”. The story begins with Shane
Mosley winning a unanimous decision over Oscar
DeLaHoya. All three judges scored the bout for Mosley
115-113. Judges Duane Ford and Anek Hontongkam gave Sugar Shane the last five rounds. Stanley
Christodoulou scored the last four rounds for Mosley.
As readers know I wasn’t there nor did I view the
fight. (See below) But I did follow it on the website
which had the fight 117-111 for DelaHoya. (Little
disclaimer here. The person doing the scoring on the
website was Jason Probst who knows less about boxing than I do. Hard to believe but true.) Imagine my
surprise (“Surprise”, says Gomer) when I saw the
bottom page crawl on ESPN announcing Mosley as the winner. From all reports it wasn’t the all out war of
the first fight but rather a punch here and a punch
there. Here is a case when the action, the interesting
part, took place after the fight.

First here’s Bob “I’ll Whine at the Drop of a
Decision” Arum from Top Rank.  If you looked up
“Smuck” in the dictionary there would probably be a
picture of Arum. For years Arum has constantly whined that Nevada and particularly Las Vegas is out to get him. He’s raised whining to a level that even the late President Richard Nixon never envisioned. (“You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around any more” At the time some shortened this to “You can’t kick our Dick
anymore” but that’s irrelevant). If Arum’s telling
the truth this time he’ll be riding off into the sunset when the calendar turns to 2004.

"They say I'm a sore loser, but they're not going to
see my ass anymore," Arum said. "I am through." The
72-year-old Arum stated that he would finish out
fights scheduled for this year, then retire. "After
this freaking outrage, I'm out of this mess. Boxing is
the garbage can of sports." The fact that Mr. Arum
has been the head garbage man for year’s doesn’t seem to make any difference. In all likely hood come the popping of the corks at 12:01 January 1 Bob will still be there. No shrinking violet in the whining arena is
Oscar himself. After his loss to Trinidad he fired
everyone around him blaming them for the loss. His
approach this time as at the very least different.

“What I have to say now is not against Shane Mosley.
On Monday I will put a full investigation into this
decision. I will put the best lawyers on this. Boxing
does not need this anymore....I will put on to my
fullest power, an investigation so we will see what
happened. The reason why I do this is because of the
punch-stat numbers. I actually landed one hundred more punches than he did. I am not doing this because I am a sore loser. I am doing this for boxing. This does
not effect my decision about retiring. I will wait
until I am settled down and talk to my family before
making that decision."

 De la Hoya was asked by USA Today's Jon Scaracino if this was, “ a bad decision or some sort of conspiracy ?” "We'll see. I am really going to put may heart and resources into this...We have seen in boxing a lot of bad decisions. I feel for boxing that it's time they stopped. I think that its time for fighters to make a stand and I am the man to do it."

Scanning the morning papers and the www.com it seems the only people that think Mosley won are the three judges, Max Kellerman along with his trusty sidekick and the shills that masquerade as journalist for the Las Vegas morning paper. In fact they all have it
115-113 so it must be accurate. Who am I argue?
(Excerpt of Article)