Questioning Mosley about PEDs responsible, not ‘stupid’

Shane Mosley said it was a stupid question.

His answer was a predictable sidestep.

There still is no avoiding the truth.

Mosley would prefer there be no talk of performance-enhancing drugs leading to his fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr., and yet the subject hangs over this event like bright lights will at the MGM Grand Garden ring Saturday evening.

“I never really did stuff,” Mosley said when asked about his use of PEDs and how being off them might now affect a fighter at his level. “That’s a stupid question. I’ve always been a clean fighter. It is ridiculous to me that the media wants to make me the poster boy for steroids.

“I don’t choose to talk about it. It was 2003 when that stuff happened. We need to worry about the fight. It is the fight the world wants to see.”

No, it’s not. Mayweather against Manny Pacquiao is. But this is the fight the world gets because the latter wouldn’t agree to Olympic-style drug-testing procedures during negotiations late last year.

That’s on Pacquiao, then, now and until he accepts the level of blood testing that the United States Anti-Doping Agency requires.

The kind of testing Mosley agreed to for this fight, the kind he didn’t have a choice but to embrace because of his past admissions.

“We don’t know how many fights (Mosley) has fought being clean,” Mayweather said. “Even with the (Antonio Margarito) fight (last year), we don’t know if (Mosley) was on nothing or not. We don’t know that.”

Debating whether Mosley has used PEDs is like debating whether the Yankees are willing to pay for talent. He hasn’t always been a clean fighter, far from it, and there is a deposition tape in a lawsuit against Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative boss Victor Conte and grand jury testimony from Mosley to prove it.

He used. He cheated. He admitted it.

He knew exactly what he was doing.

But if those days are behind him as he claims, if Mosley now enters a ring boosted solely by whatever sweat and toil he has offered during training camp, how does a 38-year-old fighter hold up Saturday against the speed and skill of an undefeated Mayweather?

Mosley, in the same conference call last week when he incredibly claimed not to “know anything about all that stuff” in regards to PEDs, said he has been knocking everyone around since gaining a unanimous decision against Oscar De La Hoya in 2003.

Not everyone. Mosley lost unanimous decisions to Winky Wright in March and November 2004. He lost a unanimous decision to Miguel Cotto in November 2007.

Time wears us all down. Mosley admitted to injecting himself with the doping agent EPO while preparing to fight De La Hoya that September night nearly seven years ago, a night when Mosley was trailing on all three judges’ cards entering the eighth round, a night when his doping exploits led to him gaining a second and third and probably 100th extra wind as the fight wore on and De La Hoya tired.

Mosley won 115-113 on all three cards. Afterward, he said he could have gone 12 more rounds.

Of course he could have.

Mosley isn’t the same fighter as 10 years ago and definitely is not the same fighter propelled by a blood-doping agent that boosts the number of red blood cells to enhance athletic performance, so if Saturday arrives and the counter-puncher in Mayweather keeps him at a distance and the seconds and minutes and rounds pass, how will Mosley respond?

“I think Mosley at this stage is desperate,” Conte said. “For a big payday like this, he would agree to any form of testing. I don’t know if he is or isn’t still using. The USADA testing is not full proof. They still believe in using propaganda as a deterrent. Do I think it’s the best form of testing out there today? Yes. Is it full proof? No.

“Anyone who understands this like I do knows that as fatigue sets in in the later rounds, any fighter using is going to be fresher because the (PED) us going to have a huge affect on the system. If you knock a guy out in the first few rounds, it’s not as evident.”

Mosley wants seven years ago locked in the closet forever, never to be spoken of again. He doesn’t want to discuss how someone who once cheated to win might now, if in fact clean, react if the biggest fight of his career against the best opponent of his career reaches the latter rounds.

Sorry. It wasn’t a stupid question.

It was a responsible one.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618.