Is Chavez Jr. The Best Option For De La Hoya?

By Boxing News - 01/20/2009 - Comments

chavez464601By Jason Kim: Having been nearly beaten senseless in his last fight in December against Manny Pacquiao, Oscar De La Hoya (39-6, 30 KOs) needs to be extra careful when planning for his next opponent to ensure that the same fate doesn’t happen to him yet again. And while there’s been a lot of damage control that’s come out since his loss to Pacquiao, partially blaming the loss on his low fat diet leading up to his fight with Manny, a win over a quality opponent remains questionable for the 35 (soon to be 36-year-old) De La Hoya.

As bad as De La Hoya looked in his last fight, I would find it hard to see him beating any top tier fighters. Even good B-level fighters with a good chin, decent power and moderately high work rate, would likely given De La Hoya a lot of problems at this point.

Fighting a top level fighter, other than someone like Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Ricky Hatton, would seem not advisable for De La Hoya for his next fight. He needs to get his health back, eat right and try to get a gauge of where he’s at as a fighter.

Judging from his 24/7 episodes on HBO, it seemed like De La Hoya wasn’t training hard enough in his sparring sessions and he lacked someone that could tell it to him straight, to let him know that he didn’t look good. Maybe people were afraid of upsetting him and falling out of his good grace and ostracized or dismissed by him.

But I could see that he didn’t look well physically in looking at him, and noticed that he was getting bulled around in his sparring sessions, often retreating to the ropes and covering up and cringing as he was getting belted by his stronger sparring partners. I had hopes that he’d have enough size to beat the smaller Pacquiao but in hindsight, I saw then how De La Hoya was going to fight against Pacquiao. It’s too bad no one else saw it.

I can’t think of one fighter in the top 15 in the any weight classes that I could feel comfortable with De La Hoya fighting, except for perhaps Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (38-0-1, 29 KOs) The reason I feel that he’s maybe De La Hoya’s best choice is because I see it as a mistake in Chavez being in the top 15 in the first place.

He’s not fought anyone, and has looked bad against the best C-level opponents that have been fed to him, barely beating them. Chavez Jr. arguably could have two losses already on his record, with his six-round draw with Carlos Molina and then his questionable 10-round split decision victory over Matt Vanda in July 2008.

I suspect that De La Hoya would do well against Chavez Jr., mainly because Julio is more of an inside fighter and is much less skilled on the outside. Only 22, Chavez still has a lot of flaws in his game, lacking a jab, defense and a good work rate.

De La Hoya could probably beat him by staying on the outside and moving a little from side to ensure that Chavez doesn’t get inside on him. I don’t like De La Hoya’s chances if Chavez would be able to make it to the inside with any regularity, because if nothing else, Chavez punches very hard to the body and he could give De La Hoya a rough time if he gets there.

Bernard Hopkins was able to take De La Hoya out with a single body shot in the 9th round of their bout in 2004. Hopkins is a good body puncher, there’s no question, but I he’s not as good a body puncher as Chavez Jr., who specializes in attacking the body and was taught by his famous father, Julio Cesar Chavez.



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