According to the latest from the rumor mill, Oscar De La Hoya (38-5, 30 KOs) is considering fighting Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (34-0-1, 27 KOs), the younger son of the great fighter Julio Cesar Chavez. The rumor, if it’s true, is coming from Boxing confidential writer Michael Marley, who says that the 34 year-old De La Hoya is unhappy with the huge money demand made by Floyd Mayweather Jr., who reportedly wants $20 million to fight De La Hoya in a rematch. Instead of giving into his demands, De La Hoya is thinking of possibly taking on the young undefeated 21 year-old Chavez in September.
To an unknowing public, this might be a fight that would sell a great deal of tickets, as many of them would no doubt be enamored by the name of Chavez, though I have doubts whether most of them have even seen the young Chavez Jr. fight. However, to those who know boxing – and have actually seen Chavez fight – they would most likely be shocked at such a bout. De La Hoya, even though he’s a mere shadow of himself at 34, having lost three out of his last five bouts, and probably should have lost the fourth bout as well.
At this point, De La Hoya disparately wants to find a fighter with a big name, but with one caveat – it needs to be a fighter that De La Hoya can beat.
Obviously, De La Hoya wants a change of luck, knowing that if he wants to continue to go to the well, he’s going to have to win a few of them, otherwise the public may lose interest in watching him fight. In selecting Chavez Jr., should De La Hoya choose him, he’d be getting a fighter totally green, and in now way ready for the kind of fire power that De La Hoya would bring to him. Although De La Hoya made be a faded fighter, he still has far more skills than what I’ve seen of Chavez Jr., and would be able to beat him using almost any kind of tactic.
So far, Chavez has proven to be unable to fight at a distance, preferring to fight at close range in all of his bouts. De La Hoya would only need to stand back and jab him senseless, not even bothering to risk getting his faced messed up by fighting an ugly inside war with Chavez. I do, however, believe that Chavez would give De La Hoya some problems if he were foolish enough to try and beat Chavez with an inside game, for De La Hoya would likely tire out, as usual, giving Chavez a chance at beating him.
However, De La Hoya is far too smart to make that mistake, and would opt to use the ring to box Chavez silly from the outside. The bout would give Chavez his biggest payday of his career, even though he’d have done little to earn a shot at De La Hoya, considering he’s never fought a top 10 fighter in his career. All in all, it would be a tremendous leap up in competition for Chavez, one that he’d not be ready for. I personally don’t know how De La Hoya could even consider a fight like this, as he’d know that he would be ridiculed by people in the boxing community for fighting such an untested fighter like Chavez Jr.
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