Боксчин Шейн Мозли-Жуниор аавтайгаа мэргэжлийн түвшинд хамтран ажиллахаа больж, бие даасан карьераа үргэлжлүүлж байна.
“Sugar” хочит Шейн Мозли 2009 онд Антонио Маргаритотой тулалдахын өмнө хүү Шейн Мозли-Жуниорт сэтгэл зүйн бэлтгэл хийлгэж байсан түүхтэй. Өдгөө 35 настай Мозли-Жуниор Лондонд Дензел Бентлитэй тулалдахаар бэлтгэж байгаа бөгөөд аавтайгаа мэргэжлийн харилцаанаас илүүтэй гэр бүлийн халуун дотно харилцааг хадгалахыг эрхэмлэх болжээ. Тэрээр аавынхаа нэр хүндэд түшиглэхээс илүүтэй өөрийн гэсэн орон зайг үлдээхийг зорьж, дасгалжуулагчийн баг болон менежментээсээ аавыгаа тусгаарласан байна.
Мозли-Жуниор 23 ялалт, 5 ялагдал гэсэн амжилттай бөгөөд Крис Юбенк-Жуниор, Тим Цзю зэрэг алдартай аавтай боксчдын туулсан замаас суралцаж, өөрийн замаа тодорхойлж байна. Тэрээр хүүгээ боксоор хичээллүүлж байгаа хэдий ч өөрөө дасгалжуулагчаар нь ажиллахаас татгалзаж, хүүгийнхээ бие даасан байдлыг дэмжих байр суурьтай байгаагаа илэрхийлжээ.
Боксын ертөнцөд аав ба хүүгийн хамтын ажиллагаа нь амжилт болон дарамтын аль алиныг дагуулдаг болохыг Крис Юбенк, Грант Смит, Энцо Кальзаги нарын жишээ харуулдаг. Энэхүү харилцаа нь заримдаа маргаан дагуулдаг ч тулаанчийн хувьд сэтгэл зүйн дэмжлэг болох нь бий. Мозли-Жуниор өөрийн туршлагаасаа үндэслэн бокс бол зөвхөн спорт биш, харин харилцааг хадгалах ухаан шаардсан аялал гэдгийг онцолсон юм.
Дэлгэрэнгүй эх сурвалжийг харах
Эх сурвалжийг нээх ↓
Before he marched to the ring to discipline Antonio Margarito in January 2009, “Sugar” Shane Mosley first checked the temperature of his son, Shane Jr., in an effort to settle both his own nerves and his boy’s.
“Do you see my eyes?” Mosley said that night.
“Yeah, Dad, I see you,” replied Shane Jr.
“Good. This is the way you’re supposed to look when you walk to the ring. I’m going to knock him out. Watch this …”
With that, Mosley turned on his heel, leaving his son with just an ellipsis. There would be no goodbye and no affectionate kiss on the head, nor did Shane Jr. expect one. He knew, after all, that the man who had just spoken to him was, in that moment, not a father but a fighter. He already knew, at age 18, how fast the switch could happen. Like any good son, he also did as he was told. He stayed back. He watched.
Now, almost 18 years later, it is the father who watches the son. Now, ahead of a middleweight fight against Denzel Bentley in London on Saturday, it is Shane Jr. who will try to pacify Senior, a three-weight world champion, and settle his nerves. Then, as his father once did, Shane Jr. will turn and walk away to create distance between them. A healthy distance, they will say. The kind of distance a fighter likes to maintain between himself and an opponent; enough of one to extend a jab, maneuver, think. It is with this distance Junior, at the age of 35, can now breathe and feel a little more in control. Also, trusted. It indicates, above all, that two men who were inseparable at the start of the younger’s career have not so much grown apart as grown up — together.
“At the start, he was everything — my trainer, manager, promoter,” Shane Jr. told Uncrowned. “If I wanted to be my own man, I had to mature and change that. If he’s constantly there, I can’t help people from thinking,‘Oh, he’s living off his dad’s name.’
“So, to avoid all that, this is the way it has to be. He is just a colleague, someone else who also did this, and I’m doing it now. We’re separating things now — not disrespectfully. He’s my dad, I love him, I think he’s great. He was a great fighter, too. But I have to step aside and say, ‘This is me.’ That’s why I’ve never used ‘Sugar’ Shane Mosley Jr. [as a nickname] or anything of that nature. I try to keep it about me.”
It’s a matter of proximity, that’s all. At the start of his career, Shane Jr. would spend almost every day alongside his father in the gym, and on fight night would return to him in the minute rest between rounds. After the fight, when his hand was raised by a referee, Shane Jr. would then flash a winning smile, while his father could be seen wearing the same smile in the background, just out of focus. The resemblance was uncanny. It could not be ignored.
“I like keeping my dad, to the best of my ability, as my dad,” explained Shane Jr. “Obviously, he’s always going to be ‘Sugar’ Shane. Any time we go anywhere in the boxing world, he’s going to be seen and noticed. In a certain way he outshines me. So, the best thing I can do for myself, in my opinion, is just step to the side. Rather than try to stand up to him, just move over so people can see me.
“The best way to do that is to not always have him in the corner with me — or as my trainer. If people want to talk to him about me, or my fights, cool. But outside of that, I just have to keep him as my dad. If ever he wants to come down and watch training or sparring, he is welcome. But that’s the extent of it. I have to keep him as my dad. If I look at him as ‘Sugar’ Shane, I’ll never amount to anything. I have to continuously build up fights, wins, momentum, and maybe later on, down the line, I’ll measure up. But the goal is not that now. The goal is to leave my mark.”
As well as acknowledging the pros and cons of having a famous fighter for a father, Shane Jr. acknowledges he is not alone. In fact, without any prompting he proceeded to namecheck the likes of Chris Eubank Jr., Conor Benn, Campbell Hatton, and the Tszyu brothers, Tim and Nikita, as recent examples of fighters who have gone through the very same push and pull. He even takes a degree of comfort from watching their development, he said, and now accepts that the career of a boxer with a famous fighter for a father is seldom linear or smooth. In Mosley’s case, that means a professional record of 23 wins and five defeats, all of which taught him something. It means boxing, in the end, has become a journey of self-discovery.
In 2013, I watched Chris Eubank watch his son, Chris Jr., in a sparring session with George Groves beneath a railway arch in London. For the first three minutes of the spar, Eubank counted his son’s jabs loud enough for everyone in the gym to hear. Then, when the first round ended, the two-weight world champion smiled, perhaps knowing he was being watched.
Meanwhile, in Eubank Jr.’s corner, Ronnie Davies, trainer to two generations of Eubanks, told Chris Jr. to “suck it up,” only for Chris Jr. to reject the advice and refuse a sip of water. “That doesn’t mean anything,” the fighter moaned, edging away from the man tasked with cornering him.
This left Davies, the trainer, now exasperated. He rolled his eyes; he threw up his hands. He then turned to the boy’s father and said, “Tell him, Eubank!” Yet Eubank, the father, said nothing. Rather than admonish his son, or instruct him to behave, he just continued to smile until the moment had passed.
Of course, this power struggle within Team Eubank was nothing new. In actual fact, it was something we had seen play out nearly every time Chris Jr. boxed as a professional. Often, between rounds, he would sit or stand in the corner, with Davies lurking over the top rope, bottle of water in hand, while his father, the former world champion, slipped through the ropes in a suit and winklepickers to stand before his son and do no more than admire him; his unblemished face, his steady breathing, his composed disposition. Most of the time, Eubank was content to just watch. And why not? The fights were so easy at the start, his boy needed only his approval. That and the attention he brought.
Eventually, once the fights became more taxing, Eubank took a larger role at ringside. Some by then even had the audacity to say he had no place in the gym, or in the corner, and that Eubank Jr., if he was to succeed, would be better off without him. He had given him his name, his genetics and his solid chin — wasn’t that enough?
“My son comes out of the womb of his mother; I am the first to hold him,” Eubank said in his defense. “We go home and we make a plan to bring the child up. We love the child first and foremost in every way possible. We work and we fight and we worry. While they are sleeping, we watch them sometimes. We do all this. We put them through school. We fight for money, whether physically or by going out to work. We bring our children up. We go to their sports day, we check their grades, we check no one is bullying them. We teach them as they grow to make sure they don’t bully others and to protect those who are being bullied. This constant love is being given to them.
“Then they become teenagers; they have desires. I didn’t realize my son had been watching the love and respect that I have always got. He’s always been watching that. This is what must have inspired him to want a little bit of what his dad has.
“I steer him to become the best fighter he can be, so I give him nothing but hardship. I give him tasks supposed to break him. He comes through those tasks, but I’m building. It’s not just the money, it’s the thought process. It’s really being tough on them because I know that’s the only way I’ll make them good. That’s a severe type of love. Get them hurt so that nobody else can hurt them in the ring. If I can get them beaten up by heavyweights and they can accept it, I know they’ll be OK with these normal fighters.”
Eubank continued: “After all of that, I’m supposed to hand him over to [promoter] Eddie Hearn? Am I supposed to hand him over to [promoter] Frank Warren? After I’ve done all of this. Never mind the money, the love, the worry. Am I supposed to hand him over? I should do all this work and give him to you? If you have your child and you work with your child and put them through school, you don’t give your child away. If I sound edgy, it’s baffling that anyone should say to me ‘step aside.’
“If I accept everything you say and I should step back, would you give me someone more qualified than me, so they can actually look after Junior? Please find someone more qualified than me and I will step aside. That’s the world in which I live. You criticize me and yet you can’t give me anyone who is more qualified than me. Your bigotry is inhumane. It is nonsense. It is idiotic.”
It is true that Chris Eubank never wanted his boy to box. However, it might also be said that his initial resistance — the result of knowing the sport’s dangers — only made Eubank all the more protective when realizing his son was in fact, like him, predisposed to taking risks and challenging authority. This, in turn, led to a career defined by contradictions, with Eubank on the one hand wanting his son to stand on his own two feet — for example, sending him off to Las Vegas to live at the age of 17, and making him spar heavyweights as a middleweight — while, on the other hand, always remaining just close enough to tell him how it should be done.
When I once asked Eubank if there was such a thing as being too supportive, he appeared flummoxed, as though the concept had never before crossed his mind. “Too supportive?” he said. “How can I be too supportive? I am his father. He is me. You become your father as you get older. We’re trying to be extraordinary.”
I asked him then if his son had ever told him to ease off, or requested space, and Eubank just frowned. “I’ll leave you with this,” he said. “I want you to find the clip of me speaking to Gary Newbon [an English television sports presenter] after the first [Nigel Benn] fight. My bottom lip quivers and I’ve done it — I’ve told my father I love him. I’ve said to my brother, he said I couldn’t do it, but I’ve done it …’ He proudly nodded; raised a finger. ‘I want you to look at the people in the picture …’ He paused again. Now his eyes had started to well up and his voice cracked as he said, ‘Where was my daddy? Where were my brothers? Where were my childhood friends? I had no one around.”
“I see,” I said.
“I’ll never do that to my boy,” Eubank stressed. “I don’t want him to ever say, ‘Dad, where were you? Was there someone more qualified than you, Dad?’
“My dad’s gone. He died in 2000. It took me years to realize that when I won that world championship, he must have been a man of 5-foot-3 walking 10-foot tall. He wouldn’t have been able to buy a drink in Peckham or Brixton. ‘Eubank the champion, that’s the man’s son,’ they’d say. He should have been in my pictures. So, when they say I’m stealing my son’s limelight, you’re g***amn right.”
Remove the famous surname and suddenly there is not as much limelight to steal and the dynamic has changed. Take someone like Dalton Smith, for example. His father, Grant, is today considered one of the best coaches in Great Britain and has done some fine work with Dalton on their way to winning and defending the WBC super lightweight title. So far, nobody has accused Grant Smith of being too close to his son, much less a negative influence.
“My dad’s not one for the limelight. He doesn’t like the cameras,” said Dalton last week, just days after his win against Alberto Puello. “But people are giving him his flowers for what he has done and the hard work he has put in. It’s great to see that. You see a lot of fathers wanting their own piece of the limelight, and I think a lot of coaches are like that in general. But he tries to detach himself from that a little bit. We know that boxing is a business and you’ve got to be in the media and stuff, but I think if I saw my dad doing stuff out of character on camera, I’d be having a word with him.”
For the most part, the words Dalton Smith and his father share are positive and congratulatory, especially of late. Together, they have now orchestrated 20 professional wins and have come to use their professional relationship as an excuse to spend time with one another and communicate in a language of their own. While some may look to create distance, the opposite is true of the Smiths.
“We don’t really show our emotions that much,” said Dalton. “We’ve never really been like that. But I’ve always said that the only time me and my dad show any emotion towards each other is after a fight, or on fight night for those split moments. That’s why, as hard as it is at times, it all becomes worth it in those moments. I feel like that is the time when we can share our emotions with each other. This is all we know.”
Similarly, one wonders where Daniel Dubois, the current WBO heavyweight champion, would be without the influence of his father, Dave. Though never in the corner on fight night, his dad is often the first person Daniel will thank following a victory and is someone whose voice Daniel hears above the noise. Indeed, Don Charles, Dubois’ head coach, has even credited Daniel’s dad for helping Daniel rise from recent knockdowns and ride out the odd crisis. Just hearing his voice from ringside was enough, apparently: “Get up, Daniel! Come on, Daniel!” Whatever is said, it usually works.
Such is the connection between a father and son, sometimes that’s all it requires — a word, a look. When, for instance, Joe Calzaghe was on the verge of withdrawing from what ended up being a career-defining fight against Jeff Lacy in 2006, all he really needed was for his father to talk to him the way only a father can.
“Joe rings me up a week before the fight and I was at the bookies in Newbridge just laying down some bets,” Enzo Calzaghe told me before his passing in 2018. “I step outside, take his call and he goes, ‘Dad, just so you know, I’m not going to fight.’
“I thought he was joking at first, so I got him to repeat it. After he repeated it, I said, ‘What? Don’t talk rubbish. What time are we training?’ He replied, ‘I’m not joking, Dad. I’m not training and I’m not going to fight.’
“I had heard enough by now. I was outside the bookies screaming and shouting down the phone at him. He was doing the same. Then I shouted, ‘You f***ing chicken! You f***ing chicken! You f***ing chicken!’ I told him to f*** off a few times and then hung up.”
It’s worth noting at this point that en route to a WBO title defense against Charles Brewer in 2002, the Calzaghes had bickered in the car so ferociously that Joe decided to exit the car and walk to the venue on his own. And yet, four years later, Enzo was now the person solely responsible for convincing Joe, worried about an injured hand, to go through with a life-changing unification fight.
“After I put the phone down, I realized it was out of order,” Enzo admitted. “How could I tell my son to f*** off like that?”
Within just two minutes, Enzo called him back.
“Joe was now nearly in tears,” said Enzo. “He was asking me why I told him to f*** off and reminding me that he was my son and all that kind of stuff. Really laying it on thick. I then said he was the one who told me to f*** off, not the other way around, and we started up again — arguing, shouting. It was a f***ing beauty of a row.
“Then Joe said, ‘OK, Dad, tell me one thing: Why do you think I can beat Lacy?’ I said, ‘It’s the easiest fight you’ll ever have. If you throw five punches and move once, you’ll beat the crap out of him.'”
Which, on the night of March 4, 2006, is exactly what Calzaghe did.
“He was spot on,” said Joe. “This guy, my dad, who’d never boxed before, figured something out that every so-called boxing expert had apparently missed. They all thought I’d get knocked out. They didn’t have a f***ing clue.”
In March 2004, Shane Mosley announced to the world that he was “firing” his own father, Jack, and would no longer be working with the man who had trained him since the age of 8. He said, in a prepared statement:
“I am going to miss working with my father,” and then added: “Together, we scaled many mountains and I would never have had the success I have had if he had not been there to guide and teach me every step of the way. He is, without question, one of the all-time great trainers. More importantly, he has been a great father who I love very much.
“However, the time has come for my father and I to sever our professional relationship so that I can try some new avenues designed to give my fans the ‘Sugar’ Shane Mosley they deserve.”
No different than any other boxer, Mosley had at the time lost three of his past four fights and felt he needed a change. The only twist, in this scenario, was that a “change” required cutting ties, at least professionally, with the man who brought him into this world.
“Part of being a good parent is knowing when to let your children go,” Jack Mosley said in his own statement. “Shane and I have had a wonderful professional relationship over the years that complemented our love for each other as father and son.
“I understand and accept his decision that the time has come for him to be out there on his own. I will still be there for him, as I always have, as his father. He will always be able to call on me for advice and support. To be sure, I will be there, together with the whole Mosley clan, to celebrate with Shane when he regains his belts.”
Twenty-two years on, Jack’s grandson, Shane Jr., remembers that period in the Mosley boxing dynasty well. “I saw what that was like,” he said. “I saw when it was good and when it was not. But when you place too much of the relationship on the sport, or on this common denominator, if that breaks up, or messes up, what does that do to the relationship? You’ve got to keep those things separate. If we can’t agree on training, what happens at home? I’ve had those things. I was always with my dad. We have a bad day of training and it’s bleeding into everything else. I don’t want that anymore. I just want my dad. Hopefully we can figure out stuff to talk about or do outside of [boxing]. We both love boxing, and it has given us everything in life, but we have to break out of that. Because boxing isn’t everything in life, and boxing can destroy relationships, too.”
For Shane Jr. to fully understand his relationship with his father, as well as his father’s relationship with his father, perhaps all it will take is going through the same push-and-pull process with a child of his own.
“So my oldest son, who is 13, does box,” he revealed. “I have taken a very strong stance on trying to stay out of it. He obviously comes to the gym with me almost every day, he works out with me, but I don’t train him.
“If he wants me to train him, we can have that conversation. But I’d rather someone else did it and he figures out his own thing; his own style. My dad did it, my grandfather did it, I’ll probably do it, but I don’t want to say to him, ‘You’ve got to do it like this because I did it like this.’ It’s very easy to go down that route.
“If he wants me to be his trainer, I would want to have a conversation about how I can support him. If not, I can help him as a manager or just give him advice. We’ve got to figure that out because he’s actually a really good talent. I think he’d be great, honestly. But I have always had this resistance. I used to tell my wife, ‘No, I don’t want him fighting.’ I’d say to him, ‘Yeah, you can come to the gym with me, but I’m not training you.’
“But what am I accomplishing with that? Nothing. If he loves this, why not nurture that? Why not support him and make him feel that he has backing and someone to help him? This sport is difficult and lonely enough as it is. If he chooses it, why let him be lonely? Why not be there for him as best I can?
“I literally had this realization just two or three days ago. It’s going to take a lot of growth for me.”
To highlight his growth, or merely the passing of time, I now took the opportunity to tell Shane Jr. what his father once told me regarding the conversation he had with his son prior to beating Antonio Margarito in 2009. I wasn’t sure, all these years later, whether he would remember the exchange. However, the way his face lit up suggested otherwise.
“He absolutely said that to me!” said Shane Jr., stealing his old man’s smile. “You reminding me of that has literally given me the chills. Wow. I’ll never forget that moment. He looked at me sternly and said, ‘Look at me. This is what a champion looks like; this is what a killer looks like.’ Then he just walks to the ring. That was it. He was like, ‘I’m about to go kill.’ Watch this.'”
Only Shane Jr. didn’t just watch. He followed. Then he learned.
