Did De La Hoya vs Mayweather Live Up to the Hype?

So the big fight between Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather is finally over. And Mayweather definitely deserved the victory. In-fact, I’m surprised it was even a split decision (more on that later). But the question on my mind this morning is:

Did De La Hoya versus Mayweather live up to the hype? Was it a great boxing match?

The easy answer is no. And that’s just because this fight had so much hype surrounding it that it could have been one of top 10 boxing matches of all-time and wouldn’t have justified the hype. This fight has dominated the boxing headlines for the last 6 months. It’s been splashed all over newspapers for weeks. It’s been on Sportscenter dozens and dozens of times. HBO created a reality TV show about the training and leadup to the fight. The face value on tickets for the fight was like $800 for nose bleeds to $10K per seat to sit down by the ring. Basically, people everywhere have been talking about this fight and only this fight. For me, the proof of the over-hyping of this fight was all of the girls at the Pay Per View party I was at actually knew the names of the fighters. Even back in Tyson’s heyday, the girls at a PPV watch party usually never knew who was stepping in the ring. So based solely on the crush of media hype for this thing, I’ll say no way it lived up the billing.

But I will also defend that same “hype” that I just exposed. Boxing needed to hype up this match. It needed to get people talking about boxing again. It needed to pull the attention away from the exploding UFC and get people interested in the “sweet science” again. Boxing’s got a lot of huge warts right now, and this fight was one of the few bright spots. So I applaud them for drumming up interest.

Back to the fight analysis now. I thought the fight itself was fairly bland; there were no knockdowns, no standing 8 counts and no real power surges (that were effective). But I thought both fighters fought to their strengths. Pretty Boy Floyd dominated whenever they were in the middle of the ring and the Golden Boy won most of the time when they were against the ropes. And for the first 7 or 8 rounds I thought the fight was pretty much even (slight edge to Floyd). But then De La Hoya got tired and Mayweather’s superior handspeed and conditioning took over. Mayweather pretty much owned the last 4 to 5 rounds. So much so, that I think it’s surprising that so many people thought De La Hoya won the fight. Hell, I’m not even sure Oscar really thought he won the bout. And I certainly have to think that Floyd Mayweather Sr, Bernard Hopkins and Sugar Shane Mosley were all just “posturing” in the ring after the fight in acting like Oscar won the bout. Those 3 guys all get paid in some form or another by De La Hoya, so of course they support their Golden (Ticket) Boy. But they also had to see the same thing I did. Mayweather landed more punches, landed more power punches and outboxed De La Hoya the majority of the night.

In my opinion it was a highway robbery that De La Hoya even “earned” a split decision. In-fact when that first judge’s scorecard was read I turned to my buddy and said “they are going to GIVE the fight to Oscar”. Thankfully that didn’t happen, but I still think that first judge was smoking crack to score it 115-113 for Oscar De La Hoya. But hey, that’s boxing…one of the most corrupt sports this side of Olympic Ice Skating.

So overall it was a decent fight. Both fighters put a lot out there. I think the big differences in the fight were Mayweather’s obviously superior hand speed and stamina. Both of those proved to be the un-doing for De La Hoya. So in the end this was a good fight, but it didn’t quite live up to the hype.

Random thoughts on De La Hoya vs Mayweather:
1) Has anyone ever seen Millie De La Hoya (Oscar’s wife) and Lisa Maria Presley (Elvis’ daughter) in the same room, at the same time? Their resemblance was striking to me. Go back 5 years for Lisa Maria (she’s aged a bit lately) and compare her to Millie De La Hoya last night – it’s the same woman.

2) Are Tobey McGuire and Leonard DiCaprio really friends? I’m not really a fan of either, but somehow I figured Leo had cooler people to hang out with than Spiderman.

3) What’s up with the mullet on Floyd Mayweather Sr? He has the ultimate BP (Business in the front, party in the back) hair do. The guy looks like the creature in Predator. Why not just lose the dreads, Floyd Sr?

4) Why did we never get any up-close shots of the ring girls? The whole night, even during the undercard, I was pining for a tight camera shot on one of those sweet, sweet ladies…but nothing, nada, zip.

5) I figured out this was the first PPV fight I’d been to watch party for since 1996 Tyson vs Holyfield. I watched Lewis beat Tyson 5 years ago, but that wasn’t a party like last night. It was good to get together with 50 friends and watch a big time boxing match again. I pray that someday Don King is expelled from boxing, they consolidate to ONE belt in each division, clean up the cheating and match fixing in boxing. And that boxing is relevant again.

6) Who were the blondes a few seats to the right of Leonardo? Especially the one with the big rack. Yowza! I spent more time trying to capture a glimpse of her than I did anything. They didn’t arrive with Leo & Tobey, but I bet they leave with them later. Vegas, baby, Vegas!

7) During the undercard fights, I’m guessing 50% of the girls that were sitting ringside were “pros”. No self respecting rich chick wife is going to show up early for a boxing match to watch two Mexican cab drivers beat eachother up. No way. Those ladies were hot, hired escorts. I saw Sugar Shane Mosley had a couple surrounding him. Vegas, baby, Vegas!

8.) Why can’t Slash get any camera time when they panned around showing the celebrities during pre-fight? He was there, sitting a few rows over from Jo Lo. Why the lack of love for Slash?

9) I still can’t figure out if Mayweather was somehow taunting De La Hoya and his Mexican fans, by wearing the sombrero and green/red/white? Or, if Floyd really thinks he might have appealed to some of the Mexican fan base? Yeah, I know that Floyd’s cut man is Mexican, but I still think Floyd was trying to fuck with people by wearing that stuff.

10) 50 Cent was wearing a bullet proof vest decorated in red, green & white (to match Floyd) when he rapped Pretty Boy out to the ring. Is there a store where you can buy custom colored bullet proof vests?

11) I think they should never allow one of the participating boxer’s company to promote the fight he’s in. Golden Boy Promotions was the promoter for last night’s fight. And I think the primary reason that De La Hoya was given a split decision. Mayweather even alluded to that in his post fight interview, and I (for once) agreed with him.

12) I heard both fighters netted high 8 figure ($10 Mil +) purses from the fight. And I heard (unsubstantiated) that De La Hoya’s total take home was like $75 Million bucks. Which includes his company promoting the fight, etc, etc. Whoa, that’s some serious jack. No wonder Oscar wanted to climb his 34 year old bones back in the ring.

13) George Lopez and Marc Anthony need to take a Boxing 101 class. Watching them jump up excitedly when De La Hoya was throwing flurries of punches THAT DID NOT LAND, got old real quick. Guys, I know you want your hermano to win, but you look foolish when you are cheering him throwing air punches.

14) De La Hoya did have a few chances when he had Mayweather on the ropes. But like I said, he just kept swinging wildly at Mayweather’s body and never went upstairs to the head for a kill shot. It was really strange to see a few of those exchanges last night. De La Hoya looked like me at the controls when I was Glass Joe taking on Bald Bull.

15) No rematch! De La Hoya vs Mayweather II should never happen. These fighters both fought hard, but they don’t deserve to be paired up again. If they do that, it’ll only be done for the money it can earn (so watch them try to do it). But I’ll give you a quick hint who’ll win – Floyd Mayweather Jr would win again. I’d much rather see Floyd stay up in weight and fight Bernard Hopkins or Sugar Shane or someone else who can whoop some ass. That could be a good fight.

Star Watch: What celebrities attended the De La Hoya vs Mayweather fight?
Here’s a quick list of who we saw: John McCain and his wife, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, Leonard Dicaprio, Tobey McGuire, 50 Cent, Jack Nicholson, George Lopez, Jim Carry and Jenny McCarthy, Magic Johnson, Will Ferrell, John Cusack, Slash from Guns N Roses, Mary J Blige, and Sean “P Diddy” Combs.