Sadly, De La Hoya couldn’t beat Father Time
This is the image of a once-magnificent champion, sitting on a stool drenched with confusion, unable to answer a ninth-round bell. Battered, bruised, beaten so decisively, it’s inconceivable to think of him fighting again.
Oscar De La Hoya is a 10-time world champion and boxing’s most popular draw in history.
Today, he is also another in the long list of great athletes who fall victim to the competitive trait that made them so terrific in the first place. They wait too long to admit the obvious.
Today, De La Hoya is like many before. He is washed up, and it was left to us to watch the pathetic ending of a man now a shell of his former self in the ring.
He is Johnny Unitas limping around, Diego Maradona a step slow, Emmitt Smith not hitting a hole with any power, Mark Spitz getting drilled in a pool in his 40s, Michael Jordan needing an open lane and some luck to dunk, Fernando Valenzuela getting rocked, Mike Tyson getting beat by Danny Williams and Kevin McBride.
Remember this: Nothing exposes age like age.
Manny Pacquiao destroyed De La Hoya in every facet you can imagine Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden, where De La Hoya’s trainer rightfully stopped the welterweight bout before a ninth round could commence and his fighter’s face and legacy could suffer more damage.
Nacho Beristain could have ended it a round earlier. Pacquiao wasn’t only too fast for De La Hoya, but put on a boxing exhibition that was perhaps the finest of his brilliant career.
Minutes after Beristain told referee Tony Weeks his fighter was finished, De La Hoya slowly walked to the ring’s other side and encountered Freddie Roach, the trainer he fired following a loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in May of 2007 and the one who so expertly prepared Pacquiao for this mauling.
"You were right, Freddie," De La Hoya said. "I don’t have it anymore."
It happens. It had happened to De La Hoya before Saturday, and all Roach needed to see was the fighter hit time and again by Steve Forbes in a May tuneup to know how immense Pacquiao’s chances would be if this fight were made. It was, and it was a beat-down from the beginning.
"This victory was no surprise," Roach said. "I knew from Round 1 we had him. He had no legs. He was hesitant. He was shot. My guy was too fresh for him. Oscar is a great champion and had a great career. I hope there are no hard feelings."
Roy Jones went up in weight class, found success, came back down and was exposed. So too was Sugar Ray Leonard. De La Hoya had not weighed 147 pounds for a fight since 2001 and it’s now impossible not to believe the physical toll inflicted by cutting to that mark didn’t in some way contribute to this beating.
You can’t look as gaunt and as drained as he did earlier in the week and not have it influence how you perform. Sorry. Impossible.
But it wasn’t the major reason. De La Hoya was completely bewildered by Pacquiao. There were stretches where you wondered if De La Hoya was ever going to throw another punch. He was so overmatched, so slow, so uncertain about where to go or what to do next, it was sad to watch.
"My body seemed not able to respond," De La Hoya said. "I didn’t have the strength to stop him. I worked hard and trained hard for the fight, but as I told people, it’s a different story when training and actually being in the ring."
He also fought a pound-for-pound king in Mayweather Jr. and managed a split decision loss. He looked slow and tired then, too, but not like this. Not nearly this bad.
It’s a tough thing to accept when you just don’t have it anymore, when the instincts and talent that born and created a Hall of Fame career are now locked away somewhere deep inside your aging body, never to appear again.
Guys hang on too long. They just can’t let go. And we are left to watch the dismal ending.
"Oscar was in good condition, but he couldn’t handle (Pacquiao’s) southpaw stance or Manny’s style," Beristain said. "He just didn’t have the strength to stop him.
"I stopped the fight because I didn’t want him to leave his greatness in the ring."
See, that’s the problem.
It left a long time ago.
Today, De La Hoya is like many former greats. Battered, bruised, beaten.
Washed up.
It was embarrassing. He had absolutely nothing.
Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Ed Graney can be reached at (702) 383-4618 or egraney@reviewjournal.com.
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