On May 6th, Oscar 'The Golden Boy' De La Hoya (37-4, 29 KO's) challenges Ricardo 'El Matador' Mayorga (28-5-2NC, 23 KO's) for the World Boxing Council Light-Middleweight title at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. After that, he says, he wants to move back down to welterweight to fight Floyd Mayweather Jnr. De La Hoya is a deserved hall-of-famer, has won world titles in six weight-divisions, and barring a meltdown, he should have a better than even chance against Mayorga, but there is considerable cause for apprehension. Firstly, the opponent is no slouch. Having been in with a consistently good calibre of opponent, Mayorga is a dangerous, if unpredictable, fighter. He has beaten Vernon Forest twice, and two of his five losses were against Corey Spinks and Felix Trinidad. In other words, his record is better than it looks on paper. His is a physically imposing opponent with a non-stop walk-forward pressure style. One analysis is that this style plays right into De La Hoya's blurringly fast hands. Counter-punchers (fast-handed fighters who like to work the perimeter of the ring and let the opponent come to them) can look really good against pressure-fighters. Another take is that when one fighter is 32 and the other 33, the stamina-deficit suffered by the man on the outside is exacerbated. Both arguments have some validity. We'll see.
Following De La Hoya's loss to Felix Trinidad in 1999, and again following his second defeat to Shane Moseley in 2003, many questioned both his stamina and his heart. The criticism was unfair. De La Hoya has proven time and again that he can take a punch. His so-called stamina problem is simply an inevitable consequence of his optimal style, which is to use the perimeter of the ring, thus covering significantly more ground over the twelve rounds. I know this from personal experience – backing off continuously kills your legs. De La Hoya's most troubling weaknesses are now his boxing skills – his handspeed is still almost as good as it was in his prime, but his reflexes have inevitably been impaired by wear and tear. This disimprovement has been exacerbated by the fact that his head and upper-body movement, once the best in the game, have disintegrated. In the Trinidad fight, he was always finding new angles to land from, twitched his head from side to side with the grace and alertness of a red deer, leaned away as Trinidad planted his feet to throw, bobbed, weaved, and Trinidad just could not hit him. Now De La Hoya's head is far too static a target. This may partly have to do with the fact that, as he has moved up through the divisions, he has stayed in excellent condition, but the extra bulk on his torso has resulted in less flexibility. Nobody's fault – it's just the way his body is constructed. But this doesn't explain why he went from being a welterweight contortionist to a downright mechanical light-middleweight. Should 7 lbs really make that much difference to a fighter's flexibility? I wouldn't have thought so. The greater part of the explanation probably has to do with the fact that he had a different team of coaches as a welterweight. Robert Alcazar and Gil Clancy worked him very hard on head and upper-body movement. They deserved a significant share of the credit for the golden boy's impressive, if incomplete, technical repertoire (back then, his only technical flaw was that when he wanted to control ring-centre and walk forward, you could see him thinking – his footwork was more ponderous in those situations). De La Hoya fired Alcazar and Clancy after the Trinidad fight. It was a mistake. His fight-plan had worked. He had given Trinidad a boxing lesson. The judges had gotten it wrong. There's nothing a trainer can do about that. Now De La Hoya is trained by Floyd Mayweather Snr, the father of his next intended opponent after Mayorga. Mayweather Snr is a third-rate shyster. He gives bullshit a bad name. His lack of technical savvy is probably the number one reason why De La Hoya is now a one-trick fighter – he's got handspeed. That's it.
For a start, Floyd Snr is obsessed with psychology. Forgive me for sounding bigoted, but whenever a trainer in any sport starts talking about psychology, I immediately suspect that he's trying to sound knowledgeable, which in turn suggests that his grasp on the nuts and bolts of the art-form itself is shaky – a bit like one of those Marxist/feminist/post-modernist (tick as appropriate) literature professors who are so in love with thematics that one suspects they know absolutely nothing whatsoever about sentence-construction or how to build links between paragraphs. Example: before the second Moseley fight, Mayweather Snr came out with his grandiose hypothesis that stamina was all in the head. If a fighter expected to tire, then he probably would. Both in sport and elsewhere, psychology is 97% pseudo-scientific noise. Well, maybe Oscar needs to do more roadwork, Floyd. It wouldn't have occurred to him. Fast-forward to De La Hoya's last fight, when he moved up to middleweight and unsuccessfully challenged Bernard Hopkins for the undisputed Middleweight title. What was Mayweather Snr saying to him between the rounds? He was trying to 'motivate' Oscar – “C'mon, man. This is a big fight, man…” He never once told Oscar anything constructive, never gave him any useful analysis. De La Hoya is not a middleweight. Bernard Hopkins is the most physically intimidating middleweight of the last twenty years, and one of the best technicians. De La Hoya did okay, considering. That loss shouldn't be interpreted as damaging his CV in any way.
May 6th is a joint-promotion between De La Hoya's Golden Boy Promotions and Don King. Trying to play some psych-games of his own, King recently said “I promoted the first fighter [Felix Trinidad] ever to defeat the golden boy and I have a good feeling about Ricardo's chances in this one.” Translation into English: “Many people think I had the Trinidad decision fixed. Maybe lightening strikes twice. Huh, huh, huh….” Personally, I think that the conspiracy theorists may be exaggerating what happens a little. The losses against Trinidad and Moseley were controversial. He landed more punches in both contests, but the opponents landed heavier punches. Working the perimeter like Oscar does means that you can't plant your feet before throwing. Heavier punches are easier to see, especially if the judge does not have a clear line of vision from their seated position at ringside. This is a natural disadvantage judges have relative to the TV audience.
Assuming De La Hoya comes through against Mayorga, he's got Floyd Mayweather Jnr on his radar. Mayweather Jnr is the fighter De La Hoya was ten years ago, probably the best pound-for-pound fighter on the planet just now. The golden boy's chances in such a fight would be slim. Even assuming that the relationship between Oscar's trainer and his opponent would have no significant bearing on the outcome (and that is a hugely contentious assumption), Mayweather Jnr holds nearly all the cards. Maybe De La Hoya can match him for handspeed, but not in his overall technical repertoire. De La Hoya's only advantage in theory could be his greater size. However, even that could backfire – moving back down the divisions in your thirties has rarely worked, and dragging his frame back down to 147 lbs may leave De La Hoya severely weight-drained. The Mayweather fight makes fantastic business-sense (De La Hoya is now 75% businessman), but maybe he shouldn't bother. It's not like he needs the money. One suspects, however, that it's not about the money. It's about his burning ambition, even at this stage in his career. They said he lacked heart. Nonsense! Oscar De La Hoya's heart is
the only reason he's still around.