De La Hoya Selects Beristain As New Trainer

By Manuel Perez: Oscar De La Hoya, not interested in sharing his time with his long time trainer Floyd Mayweather Sr., who is currently busy training light welterweight Ricky Hatton, has opted to get another trainer (Nacho Beristain) for Oscar’s bout with lightweight Manny Pacquiao in December. Beristain is an excellent trainer, and has trained a long list of top fighters such as Juan Manuel Marquez, Rafael Marquez, Ricardo Lopez and Humberto Gonzalez, to name just a few. Beristain has twice been on the receiving end of disappointing decisions for his fighter Juan Manuel Marquez to Pacquiao, with one being a controversial draw and another being an equally controversial decision loss to Pacquiao.

In both cases, Beristain reportedly feels that Marquez beat Pacquiao. With Oscar now fighting Pacquiao, Beristain may be able to get some sweet revenge finally, because with De La Hoya’s size advantage, it seems unlikely that the much smaller Pacquiao will be able to pull off an upset.

Considering how well Marquez did against Pacquiao in both fighters, good enough for many people to see Marquez as winning both fighters, Beristain will likely be a huge help for Oscar in training for Pacquiao. Although De La Hoya and Marquez are two totally different fighters with much different styles of mixing it up, Beristain still will have a lot of information that he can give to Oscar in order to help him beat Pacquiao.

In all good conscience, though, I don’t see Beristain as being needed by De La Hoya to beat Pacquiao. Oscar already knows what he needs to do in order to win, and has a huge size and reach advantage, as well as almost equal hand speed. If Pacquiao had his hands full against Marquez, a fighter considerably shorter than the 5’11″ De La Hoya, then Pacquiao will likely come up way short against De La Hoya.

In terms of popularity, Oscar is the more popular fighter of the two, so if there is any question about who the judges will be awarding it to, he’ll probably get the nod. I don’t, however, see the fight as being close at all, mainly because of Oscar’s much bigger size. Pacquiao is planning on coming into the fight at around 147, which is 12 pounds heavier than he has ever fought before.

Pacquiao only recently moved up to the 135 pound lightweight class, and now he’s going to jump up two divisions to fight De La Hoya at welterweight. That’s obviously going to be putting Pacquiao at a huge disadvantage, and when you add in the fact that Oscar will be trained by the great Beristain, this fight has defeat written all over it for Pacquiao.

9 Responses to “De La Hoya Selects Beristain As New Trainer”