That's why, Forrest said, his rise to stardom isn't going to affect his championship rematch with Shane Mosley on Saturday night.

Even though he's played host to a charity basketball and is riding the talk-show merry-go-round, Forrest is confident his new-found fame won't be a detriment.

He doesn't fight for you or anybody else. He does it all to feed his hunger for the sport.

"As long as I'm satisfied with my personal effort, that's good enough for me," Forrest, an Augusta native, said after Friday's news conference in the Conseco Fieldhouse lobby. "I always knew that if you work hard enough, you can accomplish anything. So, rising to the top is cool. It's nice. But it's not the thing I fight for. I'm fighting because of the competition."

The sports world has taken notice.

LOCAL VIEWING The Forrest-Mosley fight will appear on HBO, but will be shown locally on a giant screen at Touch of Class Lounge, 3129 Damascus Road. The $10 admission price includes buffet. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. For more information, call 737-4845.

After Forrest, who was a 7-to-1 underdog, knocked Mosley down three times before easily winning a unanimous decision in January, Forrest - virtually unknown before the upset - went on tour.

He did all the sports talk shows, including ESPN's Unscripted and Fox Sports' The Last Word. For the Mike Tyson-Lennox Lewis bout in June, Forrest was the host and a player in a celebrity basketball tournament.

He did a live interview for ESPN on Thursday, and today, he'll make an appearance on ESPN's Friday Night Fights and will be a guest on Fox's Best Damn Sports Show Period (8 p.m.).

But take it all away from Forrest, and he wouldn't miss a thing.

"The difference between me and everybody else is that I'm not up on that celebrity stuff," Forrest said. "I don't walk around with an entourage. When you see Vernon on the street, I'm by myself.

"I'm not camera hungry. I don't go out and try to jump in front of every camera. Most of the time I shun away from that."

Perhaps that's the reason why Forrest hasn't made the cross-over into pop culture, like Oscar de la Hoya and - to a lesser degree - Mosley.

After Forrest's win in January, neither Jay Leno or David Letterman came calling, and his former coach, Tom Moraetes, contends Mosley still is the bigger star.

"Shane is the attraction as far as the media and everybody else outside of boxing go," said Moraetes, executive director of Augusta Boxing Club. "If anybody denies that, they don't know boxing."

But does Forrest care about any of that? Absolutely not.

Could his new celebrity status in the world of boxing affect him? Maybe that's the real question.

"It's not like he went from a high-level of celebrity to an even higher-level of celebrity," Morates said. "He went from a no level of a celebrity to a very high level of celebrity."

"I can't see him doing something that will affect his training for a world championship fight. But the flip side is that he doesn't know how it's going to affect him either."

Reach Josh Katzowitz at (706) 823-3216 or josh.katzowitz@augustachronicle.com.