Floyd Mayweather Sr, who moves through boxing like grizzled royalty, leans forward and wheezes slowly, “Listen, Oscar ain’t the quickest learner in this business, but he won’t need to know too much to beat Manny. He’s plain just too big.”
And that, for the past several weeks, has been the prevailing view among the fight game’s wise guys about the hugely anticipated, title-free collision set at 147 lbs at the MGM Grand Arena in Las Vegas in the early hours of Sunday morning between Oscar De La Hoya and Manny Pacquiao.
The sheer perversity of matching the bigger 35-year-old, six-weight champion De La Hoya and the 29-year-old four-weight champion Pacquiao has proved to be a stroke of genius – and one of De La Hoya’s invention, as he is in on the promotion and 67% of the take.
The fight makes no sense, as the self-proclaimed sage Mayweather Sr rightly points out, yet Las Vegas is talking about little else. And that is a rarity in boxing these days, as genuinely big fights are spaced further and further apart, and the crude spectacle of cage fighting eats steadily into the sport’s core support.
At stake are Latino bragging rights, still the most valuable currency in the business west and south of the Rockies, a potential pay-per-view audience of two million and boxing’s fading credibility in a shrinking US market. This is a throwback fight, a match that might have been made in the ad hoc days of bareknuckle challenges.
It is that – coupled with the pedigree of the antagonists – which has created the buzz, and the absence of those lean vultures of the business, the sanctioning bodies, has leant a sense of innocent freshness to the occasion.
There are no alphabet belts on show (although the World Boxing Council has been shamelessly trying to extract $100,000 from Pacquiao, who is their lightweight champion), and all that is on the line has been generated by a promotional campaign of which either John L Sullivan or Barack Obama would have been proud. Indeed, Bob Arum, who promotes Pacquiao, tried clumsily to compare De La Hoya (a former client) to John McCain at the final press conference as the barkers strained for one last headline.
So, who will win? I shared Mayweather’s scepticism all the way up to the final days before his latest work of art, Ricky Hatton, resurrected his career by stopping Paulie Malignaggi in the same ring two weekends ago.
It is hard to argue with the old man’s logic. “Listen,” says Mayweather, who has trained De La Hoya and would like to again, possibly against Hatton, “Oscar is still a great fighter. He might be slower but I showed him how to throw a right hand after for years he just had a jab and a hook. And Manny, he just can’t fill out that frame. Of course he will be at the weight, but he will be fat at the weight. He can’t carry 147 pounds.”
However, it was Mayweather’s following caveat, which he shared the day after the Hatton fight, which struck an arrow of doubt in his own thesis. “I gotta say, Oscar bringing in Angelo Dundee in the corner, alongside Nacho [Ignacio Berist?in], that worries me a little. They both strategists. They thinkers. They not hands-on. He don’t need two strategists. That’s too much thinking.”
It’s a good point. All his 44-fight, title-littered career, stretching to 1992 and probably even back to his Olympic gold medal in Barcelona earlier that year, De La Hoya has needed reassurance about his gifts. His father, a middling fighter himself, has been his most unforgiving critic, and the carping has both inspired and inhibited De La Hoya, who like most extroverts, remains essentially a shy man.
He has been through six trainers – including Pacquiao’s mentor Freddie Roach in his second last fight, a points loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr last year – several promoters and numerous back-slapping confidants. For a fighter who aspires to greatness, De La Hoya is conspicuously dependent on the acclaim of the hired help. Not so Pacquiao. His energy for the fight – never more so than in this one – derives from the strength of the people he represents. It is elemental and uncomplicated, and, as such, needs no embroidering by encouraging words.
Pacquiao’s god-like status in the Philippines is not hyped; they really love the little man who, in 52 mainly frenetic bouts since 1995 when he was just 16, has won world titles at flyweight (1997), super-bantamweight (1999), super-featherweight (2005) and lightweight (last June).
He has beaten the best small men of his era – the outstanding Thai fly Chatchai Sasakul, the then unbeaten Korean super-bantam Seung-Kon Chae, Mexican multi-weight heroes Marco Antonio Barrera, Erik Morales and Juan Manuel M?rquez. There have been setbacks – a stoppage defeat at the cruel hands of the peerless Thai champion Medgoen Singsurat and an early-career countout loss to one Rustico Torrecampo, a compatriot of towering ordinariness who can boast in retirement of once beating a legend. But he inspired respect and awe by ignoring those blips, and reinvented himself.
Pacquiao brings all that to this fight, the one for which both men will be best remembered. The Filipino shows nerves but little fear in confronting De La Hoya. He once was remarkable, no question, a fighter who dodged nobody, who took on Rafael Ruelas, an old Julio C?sar Ch?vez, an unlucky Pernell Whittaker, F?lix Trinidad, Shane Mosley, Fernando Vargas, Javier Castillejo, Felix Sturm, Ricardo Mayorga and Floyd Mayweather Jr.
It is a stellar list. He did not always prevail – indeed, in 12 fights since he lost to Trinidad in 1999, De La Hoya has lost four times and been stopped once, by Bernard Hopkins. It is that which counts against him, a period of gradual decline set against Pacquiao’s sustained rise. But he will lose gloriously, bloodied and drained of his already failing stamina, but still standing after 12 rounds. It might be one of boxing’s truly great fights.
Tale of the tape
Oscar De La Hoya
Born Montebello Age 35 Height 5ft 10in Weight 147lb Reach 73in Neck 15?in Chest 39-42?in Waist 31?in Biceps 13? Forearm 12in Wrist 7in Fist 9in Thigh 21in Calf 13?in w/d/l 39/0/5 KOs 30
Manny Pacquiao
Born Bukidnon Age 29 Height 5ft 6 ?in Weight 146lb Reach 67in Neck 16in Chest 38-41in Waist 28in Biceps 13in Forearm 12in Wrist 8in Fist 10in Thigh 20in Calf 15in w/d/l 47/2/3 KOs 35
