photos by Naoki Fukuda: If you log onto any boxing news website, you?ll be overwhelmed with numerous toutings and hypes about the upcoming showdown between Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr.. Leaving the rhetoric and drama behind, what I am trying to do here, as an unprejudiced Chinese writer, is to provide our readers with some inside facts and objective analysis about this boxing event so that they can have a better taste of it.
I’ve enjoyed reading many of the articles written by my fellow colleagues about this fight. Most of them are professionally written, well documented and thought provoking. But as far as I am concerned, one of the beauties of boxing is that it is not statistic-oriented. The result of a fight is far from totally predicable. On paper it?s one thing, but in real battle, it?s quite another. However, a basic scan of both fighters? recent histories reveals that can only be interpreted as a clear advantage for Mayweather..
In the last three years, “The Golden Boy”, whose commitment to his promotional company has taken priority to his boxing endeavors, has just fought three times with only one actual win added to his accolade ? his decision over the then WBO middleweight champion Felix Sturm is widely regarded as a ?business decision?. In sharp contrast, ?The Pretty Boy? has cruised to a six straight imposing victory.
