Try as he might, and Ricardo Mayorga certainly tried, the broad smile never left Shane Mosley's face.
Mosley, a four-time world champion, was in the best of spirits at a news conference on Wednesday as he spoke about Saturday's 12-round junior middleweight bout against Mayorga in suburban Carson.
Responding to Mayorga's pledge to send him into retirement, Mosley replied: "We have a comedian up here. He tells a lot of jokes, a lot of stories.
"Every time I turn around, it's all about retirement. I'm not going away, I'm going to keep knocking people out and take what's rightfully mine. The next one and the next one and the next one are all going down."
Mosley, who turned 37 this month, said it's not about getting another title shot, although he certainly would like that opportunity.
"I really don't know what's next for me right now," he said when asked: Assuming he beats Mayorga, where does he go from there?
"I'm not worried about the title right now," Mosley said. "Just the bigger fights, that's all, so people will know I'm one of the best fighters of this era."
Mosley and Mayorga, a three-time former world champion from Nicaragua, can both make such a claim although both are nearing the end of their respective careers.
Mosley said he could continue fighting for several more years, although he acknowledged that was unlikely.
"I'm not sure when the cutoff date is - I'll keep going until I don't feel like it anymore," he said.
The 35-year-old Mayorga said he's thought about retirement, and believes he'll do so after another three or four fights. But he said he feels as good as he's felt in years.
"I've been in training camp for about three months," he said. "We have enough talent and enough skills to win this fight easily. I would make (my conditioning) equivalent to when I won my first title against Six Hands Lewis."
That was in March 2002, when he stopped Lewis in the fifth round and walked into the post-fight news conference smoking a cigarette with a beer in his hand.
(Agencies via Shanghai Daily September 26, 2008)