By Eric Thomas: In an excruciatingly dull fight, Oscar De La Hoya (39-5, 30 KOs) won a boring one-sided 12-round unanimous decision over the much smaller Steve Forbes (33-6, 9 KOs) tonight at the Home Depot Center, in Carson, Nevada. The fight was wholly without any drama, as Forbes was, as expected, far too small and weak to present much of fight to the taller De La Hoya. The only thing unexpected about the fight was the fact that De La Hoya failed to tire out like he usually does in the second half of his fights. But, then again, Forbes, 31, did little in terms of applying any kind of pressure on De La Hoya, in a since letting De La Hoya fight at a snail’s pace which allowed him to fight without fading as is his custom.
In the final two rounds when it was obvious that Forbes, who was hopelessly behind at this time in the fight, wouldn’t be able to stop De La Hoya, it seemed to have the effect of making Oscar kind of cocky as he looked as if he were fighting a champion rather than an unranked smaller fighter who was fighting out of his weight class. For me, I had to stifle a laugh because it was rather pathetic, as if a joke was being played on people and only a few of them were in on it.