On my 10-minute commute to work Thursday morning (that’s right, don’t be jelly), I caught an unexpected, early-morning surprise on the radio.

Breezing through the stations airing commercials, I stopped on the Tom Joyner Morning Show – 102.3 FM in the D.C. Metro area. It was roughly about 8:30am, and I had stumbled across Joyner chatting on the air with former WBA Welterweight Super Champion “Sugar” Shane Mosley.

As Mosley answered the questioned presented to him, it seemed as if he was talking while drinking a Slurpee or something. Then I thought that he must have been extremely tired, because he just could not seem to cleanly enunciate any of his spoken words.

Sugar Shane was duly asked about his upcoming May 7 fight with Manny Pacquiao. Then, Joyner and his crew continued with the obligatory inquiry regarding Mosley’s age – particularly questioning him about how much longer he planned to continue his boxing career.

Mosley’s answer was interesting, to say the least.

Does Mosley have anything left in his tank?

He responded in following nature:

“…I’ll probably be done after the rematch with Manny and Floyd.”

Now, as sports challenged as some veejays are, even this one failed to get by Joyner. He quickly realized the weird sounding answer that Mosley provided, and wondered why Shane mentioned a rematch before he had even stepped into the squared circle with Pacquiao.

Mosley promptly cleaned up his statement by making it clear – or not so clear, based on personal interpretation – that he was assuming that he would win the fight.

Should we have expected anything different from a boxer?  Even in this interview, in which he seemed to be a wee bit unprepared, he maintained a fighter’s routine ability to keep his ego sky high. 

Or maybe - just maybe – Sugar Shane has faced what many consider to be a reality – that he’s not getting any younger, and that Pacquiao hasn’t looked very vulnerable in quite some time. Granted, Mosley does prefer fighters like Manny who take the fight directly to their opponent, but the fact remains that Mosley is a shadow of the fighter that we became accustomed to seeing. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with knowing that you are more than likely going to come up on the losing end of a match.

But if you feel that way, don’t do interviews before you wipe the crust out of your eyes.

T Lamont is the owner, administrator and author of all content for Ball or Nuthin\'. Feel free to contact T Lamont with a question or comment at ballornuthin@gmail.com.  All created Ball or Nuthin' content is the sole property of T Lamont. Read more from this author