by David P. Greisman
And the Oscar, of course, goes to Oscar De La Hoya.
A golden statue for the Golden Boy, who, approaching the golden years for a boxer who won Olympic gold in 1992, sought a golden opportunity and left with, aptly, the gold.
Actually, considering that De La Hoya won the WBC 154-lb. title by knocking out Ricardo Mayorga on Saturday, he left with the green belt, as well as the green of another lucrative pay-per-view for boxing’s biggest non-heavyweight draw, easy green for a longtime pro who made his opponent look, well, green.
But of more importance than green and gold, Mayorga-De La Hoya was about left and right.
After a layoff of one year and 229 days, De La Hoya was coming off of a body punch knockout loss to Bernard Hopkins and, prior to that, a controversial decision over middleweight contender Felix Sturm. At 33 years old, with a majority of his energy going toward family and business, the question was, “Just how much does Oscar De La Hoya have left?”
And was a comeback the right choice for his career? The memories of the Hopkins and Sturm fights remained fresh on the minds of boxing fans. As an opponent, Mayorga was considered unpredictable and dangerous, but a loss would still damage De La Hoya’s prestige much more than any of his previous defeats.
Yet Mayorga ended up being the right opponent, a legitimate if limited contender who would ratchet up the intrigue with his mannerisms outside of the ring and his methods within. His inclination for talking trash helped to hype the event, simultaneously motivating De La Hoya to perform just as masterfully as in 2002, when Fernando Vargas got under his skin and then got punished for doing so.
Still, in boxing the most important lefts and rights are the punches that land.
De La Hoya is a left-handed fighter who uses a conventional stance, and if Mayorga hadn’t realized which side the power was on before the bout began, the knowledge had gone through his head by the first minute of the first round.
Just 52 seconds in, De La Hoya led with a jab to the left side of Mayorga’s body, ducked under a Mayorga left hook and came straight up with a right hand to Mayorga’s face that pushed all of Mayorga’s weight onto his rear leg. Mayorga attempted to respond by swiveling into a right hook to De La Hoya’s body, but he was met by a De La Hoya left hook to the cheek that sent Mayorga flailing backward to the canvas.
De La Hoya, who outside of the ring is jovial and pleasant in interviews, gave Mayorga a cold stare before referee Jay Nady guided him to a neutral corner. Mayorga got back up early in the count, but already the pompous bully had been deflated.
“I’m 172 pounds,” Mayorga informed De La Hoya in the best stare-down taunting since Antonio Tarver asked Roy Jones if he would have any excuses that night. “Now it’s on. Let’s go.”
Mayorga had gained 18.5 pounds since the weigh-in and looked solid around his mid-section. Power was both his game and his initial claim to fame, and the extra mass was intended to enhance his chances.
But just like when Joe Calzaghe outperformed Jeff Lacy in March, thwarting the usefulness of Lacy’s power and taking over when Lacy refused to go to a Plan B, Oscar De La Hoya showed why he is an all-around fighter and a future Hall-of-Famer. It was indeed on, and Mayorga went.
The contrast was evident early, and aptly pointed out by HBO commentator Larry Merchant. De La Hoya stood right in front of Mayorga, picking off looping shots with his gloves. Mayorga stood right in front of De La Hoya, picking off punches with his head.
And it wasn’t just De La Hoya’s left hooks and jabs doing damage, but finally, this late in his career, the right hand that had rarely meant much, the weapon that trainer Floyd Mayweather Sr. had worked diligently to add to his charge’s arsenal.
By the sixth round, Mayorga had turned into the same human punching bag that Felix Trinidad battered in Trinidad’s own first comeback fight in October 2004.
In the first minute of what would be the final stanza, De La Hoya sent four punches to Mayorga’s body and then four more upstairs. Mayorga wobbled back toward the ropes, turning to his side and seeking cover, and after taking two shots from a closing-in De La Hoya, he took a knee. But when Nady sent De La Hoya to a neutral corner, it was the one nearest to the knockdown, causing a kneeling Mayorga to listen to the count while staring directly at his conqueror with a look of sheer discouragement.
Happily obliging to close the show, De La Hoya flurried with about 40 punches in 15 seconds, and while only a few landed cleanly, enough were making their way in that Mayorga was struggling to defend. As Nady stepped in to end the bout, the fight had officially gone to De La Hoya.
But assuming that De La Hoya still wants one more fight before he retires, who will be the next challenge following his most recent signature victory? The top name out there is Floyd Mayweather Jr., but considering that Mayweather’s father is De La Hoya’s trainer, De La Hoya may ponder other options, all of which are viable when one is the biggest non-heavyweight draw in the sport.
All of which begs the question: when the celebration is over and the conversations and negotiations begin, whom will the Oscar go to?
The 10 Count
1. While the Mayorga-De La Hoya pay-per-view was going on, so too was an excellent card on Showtime. In the opening bout, junior bantamweight Luis Alberto Perez took a questionable split decision over Dimitri Kirilov, while the main event gave us Jose Antonio Rivera outpointing Alejandro Garcia in an exciting junior middleweight firefight. Individually, either of these two title bouts were far better than the entire Mayorga-De La Hoya undercard.
2. Rivera had gone through multiple periods of extended inactivity recently. After beating Michel Trabant for the “regular” WBA welterweight belt in 2003, he was scheduled to face Ricardo Mayorga in April 2004. Mayorga, though, didn’t make 147, nor did he even make junior middleweight, tipping the scales instead at 155. But it was Rivera who was seemingly punished by promoter Don King, who shelved Rivera but allowed Mayorga to fight against Eric Mitchell.
Rivera didn’t fight again until April 2005, when he lost a split decision and his title to Luis Collazo. He decided he could no longer drain his body to make welterweight, and after having fights fall through, took on a puncher in Garcia with aggression and came out triumphant. In the process, he excited fans with one of the year’s better fights. Now that Rivera has a title belt again, and considering that he draws crowds in his adopted hometown of Worcester, Mass., we will hopefully be seeing him more active in the future.
3. Is anyone keeping track of how many cameramen Don King has yelled at in the past year? He did so this weekend during the pre-fight locker room instructions to Ricardo Mayorga from referee Jay Nady, and I seem to recall him yelling to get in the picture after another recent bout, too.
4. I enjoy Larry Merchant’s candor and wit in his occasional comments during HBO’s boxing broadcasts. This being said, I was shocked to hear Merchant ask what the UFC is. Larry, the UFC, or Ultimate Fighting Championship, is a mixed-martial arts sanctioning body in which Joe Rogan – the host of Fear Factor – contributes more to the broadcast during the action than you’ve done lately.
5. A year ago, Joan Guzman was a well-regarded 122-lb. titlist. A few months after that, he stepped up to featherweight, winning an eliminator and the right to face Scott Harrison. Harrison-Guzman was delayed though, due to Harrison having tooth problems. As a result, Guzman decided to jump all the way to junior lightweight. But, at the weigh-in for his bout with Javier Jauregui, Guzman couldn’t even make 130, coming in at 132.5 and $6,000 lighter in the wallet. Guzman won a repetitive unanimous decision over Jauregui, showing skill but a lack of knockout power, perhaps a result of his jumping up two divisions so quickly.
6. From the “Surely you’re kidding.” “I’m not kidding, and don’t call me Shirley.” News Department: Kassim Ouma was knocked down once (and nearly twice) in the first round in his junior middleweight bout against Marco Antonio Rubio, but adjusted en route to a decision victory that, like Guzman-Jauregui, was quite repetitive. Yet Ouma’s victory was not unanimous, instead coming as a result of a split decision thanks to judge Dalby Shirley’s ridiculous 114-113 scorecard for Rubio. Bill Graham and Jerry Roth scored it 117-110 and 116-111, respectively, for Ouma, tallies that were similar to my own and that of unofficial HBO ringside scorer Harold Lederman.
7. Poor Mike Mollo. As an undefeated heavyweight prospect, Mollo signed with Don King last month. But instead of facing one of the other pushovers in King’s large stable of heavyweights, Mollo was thrown in with DaVarryl Williamson, whose inconsistency ranges from being blown out by Joe Mesi to knocking out wannabes like Derrick Jefferson and Kevin McBride. Mollo ran into the latter version of Williamson, and thus was stopped in the fourth round, receiving the first blemish on his record.
8. It’s a good thing that Sharmba Mitchell’s fight last Wednesday against Jose Luis Cruz was at the Big League Dreams softball field in Cathedral Dreams, Calif. It appeared that the bleachers were painted to make them look full of fans. But without the artistic embellishment, unaware viewers might have noticed that the crowd was smaller than the audience at a minor league wrestling promotion. Mitchell and Cruz might have been better situated fighting at the Florida stadiums of either the Florida Marlins or the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. That way, the reality of empty seats could be counterbalanced with the idea of being in the true big league and not just Big League Dreams.
9. Fights I’m looking forward to this week, part one: Edner Cherry vs. Monty Meza-Clay, on ESPN2’s Friday Night Fights. Meza-Clay gets airtime, but he also gets a major test to see if the tomato cans he’s been beating have prepared him for a real challenge.
10. Fights I’m looking forward to this week, part two: Luis Collazo vs. Ricky Hatton, on HBO’s World Championship Boxing. No matter what Jim Lampley says, this will not be Hatton’s first fight in America. He appeared in the United States thrice as a prospect. But in facing Collazo on HBO, Hatton will be making a splash that, should he win, will lead to megafights against Arturo Gatti, Miguel Cotto, Antonio Margarito or, hopefully, Floyd Mayweather. But if Collazo comes out victorious, look for Collazo to face Margarito, Zab Judah or one of the other names in the talent-stocked welterweight division.
