By Brent Matteo Alderson

On the most recent episode of 24/7, Freddie Roach commented that the only thing that “worries me is Oscar’s left,” and it should.  Oscar De La Hoya’s left hand has always been the one weapon that differentiated him from other fighters and it’s been that way since he was a little boy. 

Oscar is a natural left hander, but on his first day at the gym the trainer was teaching a few other kids some boxing basics and didn’t want to have to change things around for just one little boy so he had Oscar fight in an orthodox stance. 

In Tim Kawakami’s unauthorized biography of De La Hoya entitled, "Golden Boy, Oscar’s first boxing trainer," Joe Minjarez commented, “I turned Oscar around to right-handed and within a few days a kid that was beating Oscar up wouldn’t spar with him anymore.  I turned him around and he caught on like that.  I mean, the left was just too strong.” 

And Oscar continued to develop his jab throughout his childhood and it has been his bread and butter throughout his career.  “By the time he was twelve, he could push a grown man back just with a jab to the body,” commented Minjarez. 

De La Hoya’s stance is unconventional in that he is left handed yet fights from an unorthodox stance.  This allows him to lead with his more powerful hand as opposed to the conventional method where a boxer’s weaker hand is usually used as the lead hand in order to set up more powerful blows from the stronger arm.  Michael Moorer is another boxer that positioned his stronger arm forward.  Doube M fought from a southpaw stance, but was right handed and like Oscar - his hook and his jab were his primary weapons. 

This doesn’t bold very well for Manny Pacquiao because physical advantages magnify the effectiveness of a fighter’s jab and Oscar is quite a bit taller and his reach is significantly longer than that of Manny.  A number of insiders are theorizing that if Steve Forbes could give De La Hoya a fight, then the Pac-man definitely has a chance to beat him, but I don’t see it and compare the bout to De La Hoya-Hopkins and Barrera-Tapia. 

Both De La Hoya and Tapia didn’t have the power to get their opponents respect or the physical advantages to put on a boxing exhibition - and neither fight was very competitive. Seriously speaking, how is Pacquiao going to win the fight?  Oscar has only been stopped once in his career and that was by Bernard Hopkins, a huge middleweight. And Pacquioa is not going to outbox a guy like Oscar who’s at least five inches taller and has a reported six-inch reach advantage.  

The fight might be exciting if Oscar decides to press the issue and go for a knock out, but that’s unlikely.  The Golden Boy is already eyeing a European blockbuster with Ricky Hatton in a fight that will give him a chance to further establish Golden Boy Promotions at the international level. 

He will most likely be conservative and control the fight with his jab, which will prompt both fighters to come to what Teddy Atlas refers to as a “silent agreement” - with Oscar staying on the outside while Manny stammers his aggression and lives to fight another day.  Even though it’s obvious that the bout has more to do with making money than genuine pugilistic competition, I’m still going to watch with enthusiasm simply because this weird, almost unethical dream match is such a novelty - even by boxing’s standards.

Notes:

I read Tim Kawakami’s biography of Oscar De La Hoya in one day.  Tim did a really good job of gaining a true insider’s perspective of the Golden Boy.  Oscar’s life was crazy when he first began to achieve super-stardom. There was so much distrust and rivalry between the different factions trying to get their claws into him. De La Hoya’s first managers Robert Mittleman and Steve Nelson even cut in Oscar’s father for a managerial percentage so they could try to tighten their grip on Oscar and his trainer Robert Alcazar was so insecure about his position that he tried to degrade the different trainers that came to work with De La Hoya.  In fact, the first day that the legendary Mexican trainer, Jesus Rivero, came to the camp, Robert said he was with the maintenance staff. 

I collect boxing magazines and boxing books and I finally completed my collection of Nat Fleischer’s Black Dynamite: Story of the Negro in the Prize Ring from 1782 to 1938. 
I’ve always been enamored with the heavyweight championship and Muhammad Ali and Jack Dempsey two of my all time favorite fighters. 

When I read about the Heavyweight champions, I don’t really care about the details of their fights; I’m more interested on how they interacted with history and how they influenced their world and vice-versa. 

I think Ali and Louis are definitely the best while Ezzard Charles and Larry Holmes are the most underrated. Marciano and Holyfield are the most overrated. 

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 2008, 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