07.05.06 -By David Douse, photo by David Martin Warr / DKP: One of the things I have most loved about boxing over the years is the basic unpredictability of the sport in the sense that once you have two guys going at it in the ring it is never totally possible to predict an outcome. Sure it’s possible to be right a lot of the time but sometimes, well you just can’t know for sure. That wonderful uncertainty which allows valid argument in favour of either man in the big fights is exactly the very thing which makes them such a marketable commodity.
Hats off once again to the marvellous Oscar De la Hoya both for his remarkably clinical performance and for promoting such a cleverly thought out match up which had everyone guessing right up to the moment that he caught up with Ricardo Mayorga in round one with that first text book left hook..
Right from the outset I have to say that I thought Mayorga would be the eventual victor if he turned up properly prepared and in the right frame of mind, but just as I was clearly wrong [oh so very wrong!] in my view that Mayorga would be likely to win by stoppage from round 5 onwards I was even more wrong in thinking that a De la Hoya victory might be more the result of Mayorga not being right for the fight than anything else. There was absolutely nothing wrong that I could detect in the way Mayorga looked, physically or mentally, and he was beaten by a man who was quite simply superior in all departments. Quite clearly Oscar is not past his use by date just yet as his great conditioning and precision punching so clearly demonstrated and, talking of being in the right frame of mind, Oscar was clearly in the zone for this one.
Despite this I still believe that Oscar does not have too many good fights left in him regardless of how long he actually wants to fight. His choice of opponent this time was a perfectly calculated risk allowing him to showcase his remaining strengths was as masterly as his eventual ring dominance. Antonio Margarito is clearly a more accomplished fighter than Ricardo Mayorga, as well as being dangerous, and I can’t help but wonder if De La Hoya would have been a lot less comfortable with him. Time will tell, but I suspect Oscar will want to go out against Floyd Mayweather Jr. whom he might well perceive to be massively skilled, but still less of a risk overall. Not to mention the fact that fighting Floyd would just be an amazing attraction that no self respecting Golden Boy promoter could possibly let go by.
To persist in the risky business of fight prediction I will stay with my view that Bernard Hopkins is likely to end up on the wrong end of a beating from Antonio Tarver, despite being so far off the mark with my prediction on this one. I did say in my previous article that I thought that De La Hoya / Mayorga was the more difficult fight to pick as there were definite possible factors against the Nicaraguan wild man but Antonio Tarver does not appear to have the same potential weaknesses for Bernard Hopkins to exploit that Mayorga presented to De La Hoya whereas Hopkins definitely must be considered to be asking a lot of himself to jump two weight divisions regardless of age issues and use by dates.