Oscar De La Hoya is fighting in another Boxing pay-per-view ripoff. The Golden Boy has lost half his fights since 2003, and has lost 39 percent of fights since beating Oba Carr in May of 1999. Don't be a sucker. Save your money:
[...]the Golden Boy's ring pursuits mainly have been about ringing up the cash register. And he definitely has been successful in that arena.
De La Hoya is the most bankable star in boxing. He runs his own company, Golden Boy Enterprises, which includes his boxing promotions business, interest in several U.S. Spanish language newspapers, real estate holdings in California and New York and a charitable foundation.
This from eastsideboxing.com:
I’ve made no secret of my distaste for super-fights – carefully orchestrated farces that rely more on past glory and name recognition than real talent. The boxing press ignores more meaningful fights, the real boxing fans get ignored in favor of the mainstream, and everyone pays $50 for a disappointment.
[...]It Has Lasting Impact: If Oscar wins, he’ll continue avoiding legitimate threats like Forrest or Margarito. If Pacquiao wins, he WILL NOT stay at welterweight. He knows damned well that at 147 he’ll eventually run into actual entities like Margarito who are actually quite dangerous. Pacquiao will likely just slim down to lightweight again, albeit with a bigger paycheck and a reference on SportsCenter the next morning.
Likewise, Calzaghe-Jones promised nothing. Calzaghe said he would retire; Jones was a non-entity in the division who jumped over scores of worthier opponents. The fight should have happened back when Jones really mattered.
[...]You know what De La Hoya-Pacquiao is to me as a committed boxing fan? A middle finger.
If you really love boxing, that fight is not made for you. It’s a fight tailored to self-proclaimed boxing “experts” who ignore pugilism for 364 days of the year, then pretend like they follow it full-time.
From Examiner.com:
Despite his less than appealing record in the ring lately, (3 victories in his last 6 fights), Oscar De La Hoya has managed to keep himself in the sports spotlight, landing at least one colossal mega fight per year.
Many view this fight with high skepticism, partly because it pairs two fighters at totally opposite ends of the weight spectrum.
Oscar De La Hoya has spent his last 7 years fighting as a light middleweight, (154bs), while Pacquiao has spent his entire career 24 pounds (and far more) below.
The dynamics behind this fight make for a very intriguing affair, but in the end, it's clearly a lose, lose situation for the 'Goldenboy'.
If Oscar wins, pundits are gonna say that he beat the smaller guy that he had no business in the ring with.
If Oscar loses, that'll make him 0-6 against future hall-of-famers he faced who were also in their prime (Mosley twice, Mayweather, Hopkins, Trinidad, and then Pacquiao).
What makes it worst is that there is so much meaningful talent in their respective divisions, yet somehow in a recession driven economy, fans are being forced to shell out $55 to watch a fight that probably shouldn't be happening.
And Oscar has the nerve to try to warm the fight public up to a showdown between he and Ricky Hatton (140 lbs) in the summer of '09? Really?....
All of this mega fight stuff is probably good for these guys' pockets, but my parting question for those reading: "How much of it is actually good for the true fight aficionado that actually wants to see a substantive fight"?
I'm a junkie so I'll pay to watch the action, but at the end of the day, I'm not quite sure I totally buy the 'act'.
Do you?
