Arum thinks De La Hoya is making a mistake in coming back

By Boxing News - 06/25/2015 - Comments

delahoya92By Dan Ambrose: One person who feels that Oscar De La Hoya (39-6, 30 KOs) would be making a serious mistake if he were to launch a comeback is Top Rank promoter Bob Arum, who at one time promoted De La Hoya for a portion of his 16-year pro career.

Arum thinks that De La Hoya could wreck his health by coming back to the ring at age 42, because he feels that the head shots that he’d take would do harm to him at his age. Arum doesn’t think De La Hoya will be able to handle the punishment that he takes in his comeback, and he would advise against him getting back into the ring at this point.

Arum feels that it won’t harm De La Hoya’s reputation though if he fails to find success, because he’s already created an impressive legacy in capturing six division world titles as well as a gold medal in the Olympics. In other words, boxing fans won’t hold it against the 42-year-old De La Hoya if he comes back and gets annihilated by WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin in one or two rounds, but the potential of De La Hoya getting seriously hurt would be there.

“I don’t think Oscar is fool enough to do that. I think he’s just kidding around” Arum said via TMZ.com. “I wouldn’t want him to fight again. [It would be a] terrible, terrible mistake. He had a great career … when it’s over, it’s over. It’s not only the reputation. If he came back as an older fighter and lost, it wouldn’t harm his reputation. The problem is when you get older and start getting these punches to the head, it can do serious damage to you, and Oscar is too good a guy and has had too good a career to risk his health,” Arum said.

De La Hoya says he’ll start sparring next week to see what he’s got left in the tank. If things go well during his sparring sessions, then he says he’ll down with his family and come to a decision about whether to come back or not.

It’s hard to imagine De La Hoya doing well during a sparring session unless his sparring partners take it easy on him. He’ll likely be sparring with someone in his 20s, so it’s possible that De La Hoya would be considerably older than the guys he’s training with. That’s not a big deal if you’ve been an active fighter, but De La Hoya hasn’t fought in seven years. Before that, he hadn’t been a really active fighter during his career since 2004.

We’re talking 11 years since De La Hoya fought on a regular basis. That’s a long, long time. De La Hoya only fought four times between 2004 and 2008. He’d become a part time fighter by that point in his career, and it showed in the ring with him losing two out of his last four fights.

De La Hoya wants to fight Gennady Golovkin, a fighter who is arguably the hardest puncher and by far the best fighter in the 160 pound division. De La Hoya wants the fight to take place at 154, and he’ll get his way. Whether the drop in weight will give De La Hoya a chance of winning the fight with Golovkin is extremely doubtful. If anything, it’ll just mean that Golovkin will be slightly weakened, but probably not enough for De La Hoya to survive 12 rounds against him.



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