De La Hoya Turns To Mora After Pacquiao Walks Away

de-la-hoya464588.jpgBy Jim Dower: Going from a massive fight that would have likely brought in huge PPV dollar numbers, Oscar De La Hoya has suddenly had a lowering of expectations, turning his sights to WBC light middleweight champion Sergio Mora as his final opponent of his career on December 6th. The fight, however, isn’t a solid lock because Mora still would need to defeat former light middleweight champion Vernon Forrest in their rematch on September 13th. That’s going to be a tall order for Mora, because Forrest looked to be having an off night, and even then he landed the better shots and came close to defeating Mora.

With motivation, Forrest will likely beat Mora, which will send De La Hoya scurrying about yet again looking for another opponent. I doubt for a second that De La Hoya would show any interested in fighting the tough Forrest, because he punches hard and might damage the face of De La Hoya, sending him potentially to his retirement in defeat. De La Hoya is reportedly having no trouble with discussing of the financial terms of the fight with Mora’s promoter, and it seems that they’re not adverse to the terms like Manny Pacquiao recently was this week.

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With Pacquiao Out of The Picture, Who Should De La Hoya Fight?

dela-hoya44431.jpgBy Aaron Klein: With today’s bombshell announcement that Manny Pacquiao has pulled out of the negotiations for a fight with Oscar De La Hoya, turning down a 70-30 purse split, just who now should De La Hoya fight on December 6th? To be sure, Pacquiao still would probably be the best option, but De La Hoya doesn’t want to budge from his original offer to meet the 60-40 split that Pacquiao is interested in. In turning down the fight, Pacquiao seems to acting on principal, since he’s walking away from what would likely be none to ten million dollars that he would earn for the fight if he were to take the 70-30 split. Not bad money for any fighter to take, and a number that is three to four times what Pacquiao normally gets for his fights.

Knowing how much money he’s walking away from, you got to respect Pacquiao for sticking to his guns and not allowing himself to accept anything lower than what he asked for. This leaves De La Hoya – again – without an opponent for his last fight of his boxing career. Previously, Floyd Mayweather Jr., who had been thought to be De La Hoya’s last fight of his career, suddenly retired, leaving De la Hoya scrambling for an opponent.

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De La Hoya-Pacquiao Negotiations Off?

delahoya54546.jpgBy William Mackay: According to reports from fightnews, Manny Pacquiao has turned down an offer of a 70-30 split from Golden Boy Promotions for a potential December 6th fight with Oscar De La Hoya. Pacquiao wanted a 60-40 split, but De La Hoya’s Golden Boy management team where firm with the original 70-30 split. Instead of taking the offer, Pacquiao will either stay at lightweight or possibly move back down to the super featherweight division where there are opponents like Edwin Valero and Juan Manuel Marquez waiting for Pacquiao.

Both De La Hoy and Pacquiao had previously been stuck on the purse split issue and glove sizes (Pacquiao wanted the smaller 8-oz gloves while De La Hoya wanted the large 10-oz gloves. However, the purse split was the real issue, as Pacquiao, by far the better fighter at this stage in his boxing career, wanted a 60-40 split given his talent and his huge popularity among boxing fans.

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Calzaghe-Jones, Pavlik-Hopkins, De La Hoya-Pacquiao: Is Boxing In a Race To The Bottom?

jones464346664.jpgBy Tony Krebs: Just looking at the current state of boxing now with fighters like Kelly Pavlik facing 43 year-old former champion Bernard Hopkins rather than other more deserving middleweights, undefeated Joe Calzaghe avoiding his top super middleweight opponents to fight a 39 year-old Roy Jones Jr, and then for the kicker of them all, Oscar De La Hoya taking on Manny Pacquiao, a fighter that he outweighs by 25 lbs. There is certainly a great deal of ridicule that has occurred due to these bouts, as it seems to have made a mockery of the different weight classes, removing established weight boundaries, turning things into a state of chaos in which only what brings about the most money seems to count.

Forget about taking on your number one mandatory, these fighters seem to be out for one thing – the most money they can get for a fight. I suppose it wouldn’t matter so much if it didn’t affect other fighters in their weight classes, ones that are being overlooked just so these fighters can get a chance for a big payday. However, I don’t see it as being fair to the other fighters in the division, nor to boxing either. If someone like Kelly Pavlik, the WBC/WBO middleweight champion, is taking on fighters like Hopkins as 170, what happens to other fighters that may have had a chance to show their talent if given the chance against Pavlik?

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Forget Pacquiao, De La Hoya Needs To Avenge His Losses Or Else Face Margarito

delahoya465224.jpgBy Chet Mills: With still no official word as to who Oscar De La Hoya will be facing for his final fight on December 6th, it seems as if the leading candidate in the running is small lightweight Manny Pacquiao, the 5’6″ Filipino star. Antonio Margarito, fresh off his 10th round TKO of Miguel Cotto, is apparently in the running as well, although most boxing fans doubt that he’ll land the fight with Oscar.

The fight is a bad match-up for Pacquiao, who will be giving up a lot of size to the 5’11” De La Hoya. In the end, the fight is more about making money for each of them than it is about a fight that is truly a competitive one. Even with Pacquiao’s incredible speed and power at the lower weights, he’ll be in the end simply too small to give De La Hoya a run for the money in the fight. For a lot of fans of De La Hoya, this potential fight has been a lightning rod for criticism, as many of them point out the size differences between the two fighters which favors the bigger De La Hoya by a considerable margin. Indeed, De La Hoya has been fighting mostly at 154, whereas up until his last fight against David Diaz, Pacquiao has been fighting as a super featherweight and going quite well at that weight, with the exception of his two fights with Juan Manuel Marquez.

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De La Hoya vs. Pacquiao in December?

delahoya4574634.jpgBy Manuel Perez: For most people, the thought of Manny Pacquiao, currently the WBC lightweight champion, every fighting a fighter as big as welterweight Oscar De La Hoya, seemed laughable due to the huge size differences between the two fighters. Indeed, most boxing fans that dared mention such a match up in boxing forums on the internet were quickly ridiculed and laughed off the board.

However, things may have changed with De La Hoya, 35, planning on fighting for the final time in his career in December, and with Pacquiao’s recent move up in weight to defeat WBC lightweight champion David Diaz in a 9th round TKO in June. Now, Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is reportedly in meetings with Golden Boy Chief executive officer Richard Schaefer about a December 6th bout between Pacquiao and De La Hoya. For Pacquiao, 29, this fight would work out perfectly, because he’s got an open date around that time with no scheduled opponents. He had been hoping to fight Ricky Hatton at that time, but Hatton isn’t interested instead in fighting IBF light welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi in November.

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Is Manny Pacquiao Being Protected From Nate Campbell?

pac573246.jpgBy Manuel Perez: When Manny Pacquiao (47-3-2, 36 KOs) was in the process of beating David Diaz last Saturday night to win his WBC lightweight title, a question that was somehow overlooked by the boxing world was why was Pacquiao fighting Diaz, considered to be the weakest of the lightweight champions, rather than Nate Campbell, the fighter considered to be the best by far in the division. The word circulating around the boxing community is that Campbell was considered too dangerous for Pacquiao, and that he would have beaten him.

Having seen Campbell fight on many occasions, I’d have to agree with that opinion. Campbell would be simply too strong for Pacquiao, and could counter him and break him down in the fight, much like Erik Morales did in his first fight with Pacquiao in March 2005.

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Manny Pacquiao vs. Edwin Valero = Another Massacre

pacquiao4652335.jpgBy William MacKay: Newly crowned World Boxing Council lightweight champion Manny Pacquiao (47-3-2, 36 KOs) is looking to fight the undefeated super featherweight Edwin Valero (24-0, 24 KOs) on November 8th, either in Las Vegas or Texas, with the WBC lightweight title being on the line. Other than his record, however, Valero, 26, looks little better than David Diaz, who Pacquiao easily dispatched in seven one-sided rounds last Saturday night in Las Vegas. Though this is a fight that would look good to many boxing fans considering that Valero, with his huge glossy record filled with nothing but knockouts, currently holds the WBA super featherweight title.

However, Valero appears to be a product of hype as he’s fought largely no one of any real note, mainly fighting C fighters with a couple of B class fighters mixed in for good measure. He certainly hasn’t been tested at this point in his boxing career, and in his one fight against a good fighter (Vicente Mosquera) Valero was dropped in the 3rd round and had to struggle for the rest of the way, taking a lot of big shots, before pulling it out with a TKO in the 10th round in August 2006.

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Manny Pacquiao Destroys David Diaz

pacquiao46232.jpgBy Jim Dower: As most people expected, Manny Pacquiao (47-3-2, 36 KOs) did what he had to do on Saturday night, beating WC lightweight champion David Diaz (34-2-1, 17 KOs) by a one-sided 9th round KO at the Mandalay Bay Casino & Resort, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The fight had little in the way of suspense throughout, with Pacquiao 29, beating Diaz like a drum in each round. The end finally came in the 9th round when Pacquiao drilled a badly battered Diaz with a short left hand that dropped Diaz on his back flat on the canvas. Te referee Vic Draculich didn’t even bother counting because it was clear that Diaz wasn’t going to be able to get up from the knockdown. The fight was officially stopped at 2:24 of the 9h round. Moments before, Pacquiao had staggered a bloody Diaz with a right-left combination to the head. Four punches later, Pacquiao finally succeeded in knocking a lumped and cut up Diaz down.

Pacquiao controlled the bout in round one, using his superior speed, power and boxing technique to box circles around the limited Diaz. In fact, Diaz looked positively horrid compared to the speedy Pacquiao, rarely landing more than one shot at a time against the Filipino star at any one time in the round. Using his right hook often, Pacquiao was easily able to control Diaz, 32, with that punch alone, though unfortunately for Diaz, he had a lot more punches in his arsenal to go along with the right hook.

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What Does Pacquiao Prove By Beating Diaz?

pacquiao44455.jpgBy Nate Anderson: As this Saturday’s bout between Manny Pacquiao (46-3-2, 35 KOs) and David Diaz (34-1-1, 17 KOs) draws closer, I find myself wondering what’s the point in Pacquiao even wasting his time by moving up and fighting Diaz for his WBC lightweight title. There seems to be no logic to it, since Diaz is largely unknown to most boxing fans, only recently picking up some small notoriety with his narrow 12-round unanimous decision over a badly over-the-hill Erik Morales, who was fighting out of his weight class and had lost four out of his last five fights going into his bout with the bigger Diaz, in August 2007.

Even with those conditions seemingly in his favor, Diaz barely beat Morales. Pacquiao, for his part, had made easy work of Morales in the same time frame, stopping him not once but twice with relative ease. That alone seems to suggest that Diaz is in for big trouble against Pacquiao on Saturday night. Unlike Morales, Diaz has little boxing ability and tends to live solely by his ability to slug it out with his opponents on the inside. His hand speed is poor to say the least, his footwork slow, as if he’s fighting in a big pile of wet sand, and his defense is also quite poor. No matter what way you want to look at this fight, there are no assets that Diaz has with which to deal with Pacquiao’s greater speed, power, work rate, movement and overall boxing skills.

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