LAS VEGAS — Going into Saturday, most experts believed the “Dream Match” between Oscar De La Hoya and Manny Pacquiao would be a mismatch — a mismatch favoring the much bigger De La Hoya’s power. It indeed ended up being a mismatch. A mismatch that favored Pacquiao’s power. And his speed and his boxing ability and everything else. Pacquiao, already a Filipino icon, raised his legend to new, stratosphere-like heights Saturday, stopping De La Hoya between the eighth and ninth rounds and probably ending the “Golden Boy’s” career. “Pac-Man” destroyed De La Hoya with a vicious display of speedy combination punching and boxing prowess that stunned even the most skeptical of experts. Officially, De La Hoya’s trainer, Nacho Beristain, stopped the proceedings. But the crowd of 15,001 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas felt De La Hoya quit — and booed him relentlessly as he exited the arena. “Our dream came true tonight,” said Pacquiao’s trainer, Freddie Roach — the man who trained De La Hoya last year and whom is most responsible for convincing Pacquiao to take this fight. “The result was not surprising. After the first round, I knew we had him. He had no legs. He was hesitant. He was shot.” At the end of the fight, Roach and De La Hoya made amends for harsh words leading up to the fight. Roach said that De La Hoya told him, “I just don’t have it anymore.”
