Oscar De La Hoya

I watched the replay of the Mayweather/ De La Hoya bout Saturday night on HBO. It was kinda what I figured it would be. It held my attention, but sure wasn't a fight I would go out of my way to see.
Interestingly the fight set the all time PPV record with 2.1 million buys. It makes you wonder what Ali/ Fraizer would have done if they had PPV in that era.

I have mixed feelings about Oscar De La Hoya as a fighter.De LA Hoya was the last of an era: of guys who won Olympic medals and then got exposure early in their career on network TV, It annoyed me when everybody talked about how great he was and I thought he was vastly overrated. When he moved up to welterweight my feeling was, I would consider him great if he could run the table in the division and unify the title. He was able to win one version of the belt, but then lost his title to Shane Mosley. Now I grew up watching Ray Leonard when he lost to Roberto Duran he got an immediately rematch and got his title back. De La Hoya lost to Mosley and didn't bother trying to get his title back. He moved up a weight division and won the junior middleweight title beating Fernando Vargas. In the following weeks I herd two or three people in casual conversation bring up DE La Hoya and mention they had seen his recent fight and that he was and all time great because he had one all these titles in all these different weight divisions. And I am thinking yea, but what about Shane Mosley, Who? Ya no the guy he lost to. Well DE La Hoya finally did fight Mosley again almost three years latter as Mosley was considered washed up after loosing back to back fights. What happened De La Hoya lost again.

DE La Hoya's popularity seems to transcend wins and loses. I guess I should be happy for him. He may turn out to be a rare boxing success story. DE La Hoya seems set to transition into retirement as he owns his own boxing promotional company. Interestingly two of the fighters that beat him Shane Mosley and Bernard Hopkins fight under DE LA Hoya's promotion banner. It will be very interesting to see what the future holds for Oscar DE LA Hoya.