By Chris Williams: Oscar De La Hoya thinks he would have taken care of both Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao had he fought them in his prime instead of in his mid-30s when he clearly was over-the-hill. De La Hoya lost a 12 round split decision to Mayweather Jr. in May 2007 in a very close fight.

The next year, however, a badly weight drained De La Hoya was stopped in the 8th round by Manny Pacquiao in an ill-advised fight weight of 147 pounds for De La Hoya. It was insane for De La Hoya to have agreed to fight at that weight, because he was walking around at 180 lbs and had to take off a lot of weight through dieting to get down to 147. You could see even before the fight that De La Hoya was in trouble, because he looked painfully thin, as if he had lost a great deal of muscle instead of just fat.

In an interview at Ring.Tv, De La Hoya said “Unfortunately, I did fight Floyd Jr. and Pacquiao out of my prime. I can tell you that I would say that, no, they wouldn’t have beaten my in my prime. When I fought Pacquiao, I was drained. You know what? It’s my fault because I wanted to fight at 147. I had to drop a lot of weight within a month before the fight.”

I completely agree that a young De La Hoya would have beaten Pacquiao without any problems. However, I’m not so certain about De la Hoya beating Mayweather. De La Hoya struggled with a past his prime Pernell Whitaker when De La Hoya was in the prime of his career in 1997. De la Hoya had great physical tools back then in terms of hand speed and power. However, he didn’t always fight smart and handicapped himself with his tendency to back off on an opponent after building a lead. We saw this in De La Hoya’s loss to Felix Trinidad in 1999, and again in his loss to Shane Mosley in 2000.