By Jason Kim: Oscar De La Hoya is completely sold on Juan Manuel Marquez being able to pull off an upset on September 19th against Floyd Mayweather Jr. at the Staples Center, in Los Angeles, California, saying in a Thursday conference call “I’m convinced he [Juan Manuel Marquez] will win this fight.” De La Hoya was especially impressed with Marquez after seeing how he packed on nine pounds of muscle to his small lightweight frame, and is now weighting close to the 144 pound catch weight limit.
“I saw how he bulked up,” De La Hoya said. Oscar’s opinion about Marquez appears to be a minority one, because most people that I’ve heard from are predicting that Marquez, 36, will lose the fight to the bigger Floyd Mayweather Jr. Part of their rationale is that Marquez is smaller than Mayweather, and only recently in 2008, moved up to the lightweight division (135 pounds), and looked to be maxed out fighting Joel Casamayor and Juan Diaz. Marquez ended up defeating Diaz by a 9th round stoppage, but only after being staggered by him earlier in the fight.
Marquez absorbed a lot of punishment from Diaz in the fight. Before moving up to the lightweight division, Marquez had fought at super featherweight from 2007 until 2008. Marquez seemed to be at home at that weight and fought well in fights against Marco Antonio Barrera, Rocky Juarez and Manny Pacquiao. Marquez won all but the fight against Pacquiao, which he lost by a questionable 12 round split decision.
De La Hoya thinks that Marquez will shake up the boxing world with a win over Mayweather Jr. on September 19th. Naturally, De La Hoya might be a little biased because he is the promoter for Marquez, so it’s difficult to say for certain whether or not he truly believes that Marquez can beat Mayweather.
De La Hoya seems to have not forgotten his bitter 12 round split decision defeat at the hands of Mayweather in 2007, correctly pointing out he blew the fight because “I didn’t keep using the jab.” De La Hoya, however, feels confident that Marquez will have studied Mayweather’s fighting style and will now how to defeat it on September 19th.
However, what De La Hoya fails to point out is that he was naturally bigger than Mayweather, two inches taller at 5’10 1/2” compared to the 5’8” Mayweather, and fighting at light middleweight. More than that, De La Hoya had a one inch reach advantage at 73” to 72”for Mayweather.
In contrast, Marquez has a 67” reach, a whole five inches shorter than Mayweather’s 72” reach. Although the height difference between Marquez and Mayweather is negligible with Mayweather standing only one inch taller at 5’8” compared to the 5’7” Marquez. De La Hoya was used to fighting bigger fighters with more power at the time that he fought Mayweather, so his power and size probably seemed not that big of a deal for Oscar.
Marquez will have a much bigger task in front of him because he’s moved up two divisions in the past year. Marquez also isn’t as fast as Oscar, so that’s also a problem that Marquez will be having.
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