By Patrick Kehoe
An expected crowd of 30,000 sporting and fight fans will be filling up the Home Depot Center in Carson, California to celebrate their golden guy, Oscar De La Hoya, as he takes on season two “The Contender” runner up Steve Forbes. A genuinely festive atmosphere has over taken this L.A. “Homecoming” promotion, revellers glad handing “The Golden Boy” at every stop along the way leading up to this contest of un-equals. Outside of Forbes’ family, friends and trainer Jeff Mayweather, no one really cares much about ‘the other guy’ in this fight of necessary inconvenience for the great De La Hoya. Sure, he’s come ‘home’, to the Los Angeles area, to make a fan friendly ceremonial lap of honour, while trying to get his body and mind into something like fighting shape, in lieu of the more important task of facing down Floyd Mayweather in September.
“I’m already at 147,” Oscar has proudly decreed this week. The Forbes fight contracted for a 150 pound limit means that Oscar has been doing his due diligence training, having put in the necessary time to make an honest fighting weight. And as we all know about the cover boy De La Hoya, appearance really does matter, the surface of things is often testament to the heart of the issue before him. Besides, De La Hoya has no intention of letting the thirty-one year old Forbes play the part of Felix Strum, if he can help it.
The contest, as a boxing match, remains completely dependent on the fighting readiness of De La Hoya. If his 35 year-old body can produce anything approaching competent kinetics, generally fluid technical punching, while sustaining nearly elite level cardio fitness, then, it’s Oscar in a walk. Yes, De La Hoya, well mannered as usual, has allowed for the possibility that Forbes might try and punch above his weight – though we note he’s scored only nine career stoppages in thirty-eight fights – but, the record also reads Forbes has lost two of his last three fights.
And yet Forbes has stepped into the breach, the expectations game that has him designated as the fall guy, the guy who has to try and spoil the best laid plans of Golden Boy Promotions, HBO, Mayweather Promotions and much of the curiosity fed sports entertainment industry globally. Such guarded protectionism for a future fight against ‘Money’ Mayweather that few expect De La Hoya to win. Of course, the critical issue is getting the rematch promotion made, allowing boxing to have another moment of centrifugal significance and realizing the bonanza pay per view profits of De La Hoya-Mayweather II for all those concerned.
For this fight Steve Forbes soldiers ahead, braving a predictably innocuous fate, trying his best to legitimate his fight of a life time, sworn to try with all of his skill and might to be a “live dog”, and if possible a dangerous man, as Oscar De La Hoya attempts himself to graduate to contender’s status. The boxing industry’s one true mogul now attempts to justify himself as a prize fighter of quality, not merely reputation and marketing cache. Can Oscar De La Hoya still construct decisive punching volleys against modestly talented opposition?
For at least three minutes of Saturday’s fight, that question will be ebbing through the minds of dedicated ringside observers and scribes alike. Just how real a fighter can the spring 2008 version of the most famous son of East L.A. be, trading blows with respectable ‘B’ List opposition brought into his golden shadow, for the purpose of justifying the case that Oscar De La Hoya can still perform in the brutal trade. Perhaps, Oscar’s Los Angeles “Homecoming” will have a fight at the core of this intended pageant, this great man’s not-on-pay-per-view good will gesture.
For the throngs assembling in Carson, few will care about what De La Hoya missed out on being, just how great the great man could have been as a boxing champion. The EMI record labelling to come, the prefacing 223-5 amateur record highlighted by Olympic gold in 1992, the eventual five weight division title captures, the purchasing of Ring Magazine, the Latino cultural iconography of his name, can be viewed as orbital jewels against the black hole of that one loss of affective aggression against a Puerto Rican legend. For all of his peerless entrepreneurial mega fortune, his status as a legendary fighter was rerouted during the closing rounds of the mammoth welterweight unification encounter with “Tito” Trinidad, September 18, 1999.
If destinies do hinge upon moments of loss and neglect, De La Hoya’s defiant defensiveness sought that night to safeguard a victory he felt his masterful movement and timely hitting were dictating, to a frustrated Felix Trinidad. The debate as to De La Hoya ‘merely boxing out’ the championship rounds against Trinidad, instead of closing with strategic flurries, has become a classic debating point among boxing historians. And yet, the end of that fight and the loss on the score cards that was to follow seemingly voided De La Hoya’s tenure atop prizefighting’s absolute elite. Of course, he’s gone on to be a boxing legend; but, that has been more the result of his status as a marketing icon for the sport, a once in a generation mainstream superstar whose face and name are instantly recognizable beyond his athletic achievement. Oscar ‘the omniscient one’ doesn’t need the frame of his sport for support, such is his cultural currency.
If Oscar De La Hoya is a man of his word, and does what he says he intends to do, then he will grace us with only three more boxing matches. The theoretical plan would be to take care of his warm up with Steve Forbes, soaking up the adoration of his California admirers and back into the breach, setting to the task of upending pound for pound king Floyd Mayweather Jr., and perhaps the laws of the physical universe in so doing to thus set up an almost mind altering crescendo in boxing Miguel Cotto – the date pushed back to 2009 – to completely rewrite his own legacy within the sport. Phew! Just writing that ambitious list takes your breath away!
But can you imagine the consequences of making such a list concluded achievements? Oscar does. Any other man’s fiction is the meat and drink of imaginative men, ambitious to the bitter end. And why not, what has De La Hoya to lose in being audacious, unreasonable and bordering on self-caricature? Such need be the fantasies of great men in the world of big time boxing. Why else did the countless millions with no racial or cultural affinity for Muhammad Ali adore him so, to the end and beyond?
Think big or stay home; Oscar De La Hoya has lived by just such a credo. He’s always dared to dream beyond the limits of commonsense and probability. Just get super fit, take a decent warm up and roll the dice against Mayweather. All the technical questions have been worked out; there’s nothing left but executing a perfect fight. Just like last time. Why not take one more shot at the improbable?
Maybe there is something of the great fighter left coursing though the great man. And any way, why not make believe, make the doubters believe? Could it be that for Oscar De La Hoya there remains a greater purpose yet unseen? That’s what legends suppose, no matter what the mirror says, what bells are tolling, no matter the hour of reckoning.
Our more practical side interrupts our daydreaming at this point of fantasy to remind us: “He already knows there won’t be a Cotto fight.”
The real batting order for Team De La Hoya will look something like Forbes, Mayweather and a farewell some-body, to end his career on a winning note. Period! Any speculation of De La Hoya taking down Mayweather and turning boxing upside down for half a year, as a De La Hoya-Cotto mega fight gets primed, produced and printed, is just another classic promotional hook of never-to-be speculation, masterfully floated to keep the “Golden One” securely nestled in the hearts and minds of his beloved, the general public.
Of course, there was a time Oscar De La Hoya was capable of imposing miracles upon us. And who can say what must be fiction; some things are products of pure mind and not even the actions of men can divert such renderings.
First, he must begin by winning a boxing match, a fight if necessary, with Steve Forbes, his hand chosen opponent, in front of the people that have always loved him, almost in his own backyard.
How hard can that be?
Patrick Kehoe may be reached at pkehoe@telus.net