Trinidad, Mosley victories highlight big year

 Felix Trinidad Jr. and Shane Mosley propped up boxing, a sport sagging under a shallow heavyweight division and scandal in 2000.

 The speed, power and heart the unbeaten Trinidad and Mosley showed in moving up in weight and winning junior middleweight and welterweight title fights excited fans and had them thinking of greats like Duran, Leonard, Hagler and Hearns.

 The lack of competition, dull fights and another Mike Tyson controversy drained interest from the heavyweight division, in which Lennox Lewis defended the WBC-IBF titles three times during the year and Evander Holyfield won the vacant WBA championship.

 Tyson fought Andrew Golota and Lewis defended his titles on pay-per-view. But the most announced pay-per-view buys were the 588,000 for Mosley's split decision over Oscar De La Hoya in an IBF-WBC welterweight title showdown, and the 520,000 for Trinidad's 12th round technical knockout of Fernando Vargas for the IBF-WBA junior middleweight championships.

 The year began in controversy for Tyson when women's groups and some politicians protested the British government's decision to allow the convicted rapist into the country. The ruling was upheld and Tyson scored a second-round technical knockout of Julius Francis on Jan. 29 in Manchester, England.

 His fight against Lou Savarese on June 26 in Glasgow, Scotland, was stopped after 38 seconds. But Tyson continued to go after his opponent and he elbowed the referee to the floor. He was fined $187,500 but was not suspended by the British Boxing Board of Control.

 There were many ticket and pay-per-view buyers unhappy when Golota quit against Tyson after the second round on Nov. 11 in the Palace of Auburn Hills in Michigan. Golota was admitted to a hospital for what a doctor said was a concussion, herniated disc in his neck and a broken left cheek bone. He was released in about 24 hours.

 Scandal hit boxing, a sport familiar with it, when Robert W. Lee, then president of the IBF, was charged with 27 counts of taking bribes to fix rankings. He was acquitted on all of those counts, but was convicted on one count of money laundering, two counts of tax evasion and three counts of interstate travel in aid of racketeering.

 Promoters Bob Arum and Cedric Kushner testified to paying the IBF to get fighters ranked. Arum ($125,000) and Kushner ($175,000) were fined by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. The New Jersey State Casino Control Commission was seeking to bar the two from doing business with casinos. Both promoters have agreed not to do business in New Jersey while the fighting the commission's action.

 Promoter Don King, an unindicted co-conspirator, did not testify at Lee's trial.

 The fight of the year probably was Trinidad's victory over Vargas Dec. 2 in Las Vegas.

 Trinidad knocked down Vargas twice in the first round, got knocked down in the fourth, then put Vargas down three times in the 12th round. Trinidad, a former welterweight champion, won the IBF 154-pound title and defended the WBA title he had gained in a one-sided decision over David Reid on March 3 in Las Vegas.

 In another exciting fight, Mosley, a former lightweight champion, won five of the last six rounds on two of the three official scorecards and took the WBC welterweight title from De La Hoya on June 17 at Los Angeles.

 As for the heavyweights, Lewis stopped Michael Grant and Francois Botha in the second round, then scored a one-sided decision over David Tua on Nov. 11 in Las Vegas.

 Lewis was stripped of the WBA title when a federal judge ruled he breached a contract by fighting Grant instead of signing for a mandatory WBA title defense against the highest available contender.

 Holyfield, who fought a disputed draw against Lewis and then lost a decision to him for the undisputed championship in 1999, became the first fighter to win at least a piece of the heavyweight title by winning the WBA championship in a unanimous but close decision over John Ruiz on Aug. 12 in Las Vegas.