By Matt Stein: For as long as I follow boxing, there’s something’s I’ll just never understand. Case in point, all the love an adoration given to a fighter like Oscar De La Hoya, who is good fighter, but also one that has failed over and over again in the biggest fights of his career. In the biggest PPV fights of his career, against Shane Mosley, Bernard Hopkins, Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr., De La Hoya has lost every time, yet he still remains a much more popular fighter than someone like Hopkins.
That just seems wrong to me. Hopkins (49-5-1, 32 KOs), a fighter who previously held onto a portion of the middleweight title for an incredible 11 years, until finally losing it to Jermain Taylor in 2005. By that time, Hopkins was 40-years-old, an age where most fighters are long retired.
Yet he wasn’t nearly through as a fighter. He then moved up to the light heavyweight division and has something of a second career, beating Antonio Tarver, Winky Wright, and most recently Kelly Pavlik. Sandwiched between those fights is a controversial loss to Joe Calzaghe.
While Hopkins has won most of the biggest fights of his career, only losing to Roy Jones Jr. earlier in his career, and then twice to Taylor and once to Calzaghe, De La Hoya was getting beaten by Felix Trinidad and Shane Mosley in the prime of his career, and having to struggle against faded fighters like Pernell Whitaker in 1997.
Given Hopkins sustained success through his career in comparison’s to De La Hoya’s uneven performances, it seems ridiculous that De La Hoya is the more popular fighter. Granted, De La Hoya won an Olympic Gold medal in1992, but that still doesn’t explain why De La Hoya is more popular.
There’s got to be another reason for it. It’s unclear what it is, but what is clear is that it’s not based on success, because De La Hoya hasn’t accomplished what Hopkins has. In a way, it seems like De La Hoya is being rewarded by his looks rather than his ability, reminding one of female tennis player, Anna Kournikova, who looks great, but isn’t close to being a star player.
Yet she makes more money that other more accomplished female tennis players, raking in the money in endorsements despite her lack of quality wins. Could this be the case with De La Hoya? By all measure, Hopkins should be the one make huge sums of money in PPV fights, not De La Hoya.
If a fighter is valued for his ability to fight, then by all means, Hopkins should be much more popular than De La Hoya, because he’s proven it during his entire career, not just sporadically like Oscar. On top of all that, Hopkins even holds a win over De La Hoya, having beaten him by a 9th round stoppage in September 2004. The fight did increase Hopkins’ fan base, but not nearly to the extent of De La Hoya. That’s just not right.
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