To the boxing world, "Sugar" Shane Mosley is one of the sport's premier performers, a throwback to the days when real fighters fought. But to 11-year-old Shane Mosley Jr., he's just dad. And the youngster was a tough sell in the locker room after seeing his father lose for the first time in January to Vernon Forrest.

"He was very hurt," Mosley said of his namesake. "He was crying in the back and I was like, 'what are you crying for?' He said, 'well, you lost.' And I said, 'That's okay. We'll come back and get him. Don't worry about that. '"

"We'll get him."

From the moment the lopsided unanimous decision was announced for Forrest, Mosley starting plotting his revenge. He gets his chance on July 20 at the Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. And while much of the industry converged on Memphis, Tennessee for the Lennox Lewis-Mike Tyson bout last weekend, Mosley stayed in his Big Bear, California training camp, even foregoing the temptation to take on Forrest in a charity basketball game sponsored by 'The Viper'. This fight is that important.

"My focus is on training here in Big Bear," said Mosley. "I'm training hard and getting ready for this fight so I can just massacre him. I really don't want to leave any doubt about this fight. I know what it was when we first fought. I think he even knows what it was."

"It" was the headbutt heard 'round the world, a second round clash of heads that Mosley claims took him out of the fight for all intents and purposes. Obviously, Forrest, who dropped Mosley for the first time in his career en route to his victory, disagreed. This difference of opinion has led to a war of words between the two, a turn of events that is out of character for the two amateur rivals, who both rank among the sport's gentlemen.

"I think it's more personal on his side because he wants to be 'the man' so bad, and have that limelight so bad that it's making him look a little ugly, making him look like he's not the one everybody thought he was," said Mosley. "All that's doing is adding fuel to the fire. I think that after the first round, it wasn't me in there after everything that happened. I know in my heart that I'm a way better fighter than what I showed that night. When I get in there I'm going to prove that and show him that I'm the superior fighter, and the best fighter out there."

Mosley and Forrest formally announced their rematch in Indianapolis last week, and with the champion refusing to square off with the challenger, the mind games have already begun. "I think he just wanted to show that he was the champion, that he was superior," said Mosley. "I don't know what he was getting out of not looking at me, but he knew I was there so that's all that matters."

"He runs off at the mouth too much," said Mosley of Forrest. "Fans really don't like that. When De La Hoya beat Chavez, he started mouthing off a little bit, and then the fans started turning away from him and that's why they really wanted me to beat him. It's a good thing when you win a fight and say, okay, I won, but when you try to act like you're the man, or whatever, the fans really don't like that."

"I think that I'm a very approachable guy when you see me on the street, and when I'm in the ring, I'm a hard fighter, a hard warrior," Mosley continues. "I fight by my heart. They know they'll always get a good fight out of me. Vernon has a history of stinking out the place. Even with my fight he stunk it out a bit because he did a lot of holding."

From Indy, it was right back to business for the new father (Mosley and his fiancee had a son, Shane's third, on May 29). "This camp is a little different because I started a little earlier," said Mosley. "For sparring, I think I'll still use Rhoshii (Wells), and there's a guy out there that's from Indianapolis. He's a tall guy, and I'll use a few guys that are pretty tall and that are around 154 to 160 pounds. I think that may be the difference in the camp. I have a personal trainer that I use, and he's showing me a lot of different things. I already had power and strength, but this guy, Daryl Hudson, is taking it to another level. When I get in there to really define pound for pound, people are going to be like, 'Wow' when they see it. It's going to be amazing. I can't wait to just get in there and do this. It's going to be lovely. And once I put my hands on him, the world will know that the first fight was just a fluke."

A fluke was the first Hasim Rahman-Lennox Lewis fight. But Forrest-Mosley had no lucky punches. It was a systematic beating with no questions about the outcome; a bout punctuated by a tenth round body shot that left Mosley gasping. "Sugar" Shane has seen more than enough of his first loss, and his competitive nature won't allow him to accept it; some say that's the sign of the great ones.

"I probably watched the fight four times," said Mosley. "It's kind of hard to say there are things to improve on, because it wasn't actually me doing those different things. It was a shell of myself in there after the first round. I could look at the first round and say okay, I can improve on this or that, but after that, I couldn't move from side to side because my equilibrium was off. When he had me like that, he should have knocked me out. He said that he let it go the distance, but he couldn't knock me out. He didn't finish the job; he didn't close the show. I was wobbly and wasn't even there, and he couldn't do anything. He tried and tried, but he couldn' t. I was attacking him."

It was in the first round where Mosley momentarily rocked Forrest, a brief shining moment in an otherwise forgettable night; a moment that may have

given the Pomona native a false sense of confidence against the underrated Forrest. "After the first round I did say that I was getting ready to knock him out in the second or third round," Mosley admits. "I thought that he was getting ready to go, because I didn't hit him with my best stuff in the first round. I went out there and peppered him a little bit to see where he was at, and he couldn't respond to none of that stuff, none of the speed that I had for him. Even the movement I had for him in the first round, he couldn't respond. I said, 'OK, I'm getting ready to tag him up,' and I think that's how he was able to hit me with the headbutts because I stood right there. I didn't expect him to come across the ring and dive in with his head. When he did it, I was like, 'Whoa, how did you do that?' In different interviews that he had, when he said that I wasn't expecting a headbutt, that makes me think that he was doing it on purpose because he knew that he was on his way out of there."

Losing in such a decisive fashion has made many rethink their placement of Mosley among boxing's future greats. Most comparisons of the first bout with Forrest have been to Sugar Ray Robinson's loss to Randy Turpin and Sugar Ray Leonard's loss to Roberto Duran. But neither of those fights were so decisively won by the victors, who subsequently lost rematches. And even among boxing insiders, there are questions about the wisdom of Mosley jumping right back in with his conqueror without a confidence building tune-up. But if "Sugar" Shane is bearing any psychological scars from his defeat, they sure aren't showing.

"The loss didn't seem that devastating to me because it wasn't me fighting at my best," said Mosley. "It doesn't really feel like a loss to me. It just feels like something was stolen away from me, like I got hit with a bat and they ran off with the title. It's like I really didn't fight for it yet. I just want to fight a smooth and clean fight, the way 'Sugar' Shane fights.

"That fight was the past; this is the future, and I'm ready to go to war," he continues. "I'm training very hard, and I think that in this fight I'll be a lot stronger, a lot faster, a lot more focused. I don't care who is in the ring with me that night. I'll beat anybody."

But why not ease back into things with a fight or two? Mosley's warrior instincts won't allow him to, and whether it proves to be the right or wrong move, his fighting heart deserves kudos.

"I didn't want anyone to beat Vernon because I know that it wasn't me that lost that night," said Mosley. "There's really more pressure on him because he's doing a lot of mouthing off. He's going to have to try to come out and knock me out like he says and he has to do things that he's not accustomed to doing. And me, I'm trying to do the same thing that I did in the first round for the whole fight."

On July 20, Mosley may very well be putting his career on the line. Two consecutive losses can do irrevocable damage to his ring status, yet he is supremely confident of victory. And his fire is a controlled one, but questions that revolve around the ability of Forrest's style to always give him problems rankle "Sugar" Shane a bit.

"I feel like they really don't know me and don't know what I can do," said Mosley. "After I beat him, demolish him, make him look stupid, and make it look so easy, then they'll have to come up with a different story for "Sugar" Shane Mosley. Then I'll go down the line, and I might lose again, and they'll say that that guy has the style to beat me. They really don't know boxing that well. In the first round I looked far superior to him. He had no answer at all for me in the first round. In the second round, he gives me a headbutt, and then he starts hitting me when I can't move. They should know that something happened in the second round that didn't allow me to fight the way I normally fight. If I watched the fight, I would say that I don't think it was "Sugar" in there. But they'll see me on the night of the fight."

Fame and money can make a fighter complacent; so can dominance. Rarely challenged throughout his career, Mosley's ability to dazzle may have made him lackadaisical when it counted against a fighter who came in with the hunger that he may have lost since beating Oscar De La Hoya in June of 2000. But that hunger is back, and Mosley's starving.

"I look at the loss as a plus," said Mosley. "Things happen for a reason. He won that night, and everything went his way. But now I'm hungrier, I have more fire, and I really want to fight everybody. I want to get past Vernon and fight either Oscar or Vargas, whoever wins; Winky, if he wants to fight; Bernard Hopkins. I'm ready to fight all of them. I want to get all of them out of the way. I want to show them who the real pound for pound king is, and why I'm pound for pound. I want them and me face to face in the ring so they'll know that "Sugar" Shane means business."

For "Sugar" Shane Mosley, business is training and fighting. He believes he still has five or six more years left in the game, before going into training and managing. When he does leave the ring, it will be the game's loss, but if he has his way, he will leave a mark to be remembered, especially for his biggest fans.

"It's very important for me to be true to the legacy of the Sugars, and to leave this game as being one of the best of this era," said Mosley. "I'm very competitive and that's all I want. I want my kids to say, 'my daddy was one of the best fighters and he made a difference in the boxing world.'"