By Brent Matteo Alderson
I was ecstatic when I heard that negotiations for a Oscar De La Hoya-Manny Pacquiao fight had stalled because it wouldn’t have been much of a fight. Come on, Pacquiao is a hell of a fighter, probably the best pound-for-pound in the world, but this isn’t pound for pound, this is Oscar’s pounds versus the Pacman’s.
Manny just moved up to 135 pounds for the first time this past summer and won his first world title at 112. Now compare that to Oscar De La Hoya who started his career as a lightweight and has weighed as much as 160 pounds for a fight. The difference in size is ridiculous and it’s not like Manny has the capability to develop physically because he’s already moved up a number of divisions by adding muscle mass.
You also have to take his height and reach into account, he’s already a small lightweight, and he’ll continue to be limited by his physical dimensions. He’s not a Tommy Hearns or a Michael Spinks, men who had the frames to move up because of their over-all length.
Golden Boy Promotions had a lot of audacity trying to make this fight since De La Hoya had experienced a similar situation pertaining to size disparity earlier in his career. In 1995 Arum wanted to showcase Oscar to a live New York audience and had tentatively scheduled his debut against Tracy Harris Patterson, but relented after realizing that De La Hoya was just too big. Oscar ended up making his New York debut that December against James Leija who was still dwarfed by the Golden Boy and Pacquiao is even smaller than Jesse James and that was when Oscar was a Lightweight! The sadistic part of the match was that the size discrepancy between De La Hoya and the Pac-man would have been even more pronounced than the Max Schmeling-Mickey Walker slaughter.
So why did Pacquiao’s brain trust want the fight. Money of course. Arum would have had the opportunity to be a co-promoter in another big De La Hoya fight and Pacquiao would have had a chance to defy all logic and make a large eight figure pay day.
What else was Freddie Roach going to say? Manny has been so loyal to him and the financial rewards were going to be so great that the Pac-man would have been offended if Roach had said anything that could have possibly jeopardized the fight from happening. It was Pacquiao’s people’s job to say that he could win the fight because they wanted the fight to happen because a loss against De La Hoya wouldn’t have hurt Manny’s marquee since the size disparity would have been blatantly apparent. Plus Manny would have to fight two or three world class fighters like Juan Manuel Marquez, Joan Guzman, or Edwin Valero to make the kind of money he would make with Oscar.
Notes:
I was impressed with Deontay Wilder after seeing him in his Olympic debut and consider him to be a very good professional prospect. The announcer said that he was just a jab-right hand type of fighter, but he staggered his Algerian opponent a few times with sling shot left hooks. Keep your eye on Wilder.
Boxing Babylon by Nigel Collins was another one of the books I read this summer and it too was a joy to read. The book is a compilation of a number of intriguing stories that will fulfill the curiosity of even the sport’s most ardent fans. One of the chapters deals exclusively about the circumstances revolving the murder of Middleweight great Stanley Ketchel. Another chapter focuses on the bizarre death of Tyrone Everett, the late seventies Junior-Lightweight contender who was robbed of the decision in his title fight against Alfredo Escalera. Everett died from a gun shot, but a transvestite as well as bags of heroin were found at the crime scene.
Brent Matteo Alderson, a graduate of UCLA, has been part of the staff at BoxingScene.com since 2004. Alderson's published work has appeared in publications such as Ring Magazine, KO, World Boxing, Boxing 2006, and Latin Boxing Magazine. Alderson has also been featured on the ESPN Classic television program “Who’s Number One?” Please e-mail any comments to BoxingAficionado@aol.com