Now that De La Hoya has been out of boxing for a while...Where do Oscar fans rank him

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this thread is going exactly how i predicted.

 

You have yours, I'll keep mine.

Every coach and pro trainer I've spoken to about this fight have all said Oscar lost.

Actually Oscar wasn't coming over top of Quartey's jab as frequently as he should have. He sat and did nothing in the middle rounds meanwhile Quartey threw his jab and right. You musta heard Lampley echoing that during the fight with reference to the Quartey vs Lopez fight. Again, DelaHoya wasn't doing what he should have been doing.

Two clear as sky references tell me that Delahoya was losing the fight.
You could hear Lampley, Merchant, and Foreman as loud as ever "another hard right hand by Quartey," over and over.

Remember Lampley after the 9th, "Going into the last three rounds, Oscar DelaHoya is in trouble." Remember Merchant after the 11th round, "Oscar Delahoya shook his head in frustration."

The man lost the fight and need more than just one knockdown in the 12th to earn a draw. Quartey would have always been hard pressed to get the verdict in Oscar's home town.

 

Contrary to the above, while Quartey was throwing the right hand, he wasn't throwing it enough. Thats the reason why De La Hoya survived rounds 7, 8 and 9. De La Hoya was ready to be taken as he was hurt and had lost his confidence during these rounds. Quartey seemed content on boxing Oscar's head off, with not enough right hands. Even though Oscar lost these three rounds, heavily, it was actually him who was the one coming forward. Quartey gave him too much respect during those rounds and stood off him for the vast majority of those 9 minutes behind the jab and occasional right hand.

 

yup. round15 is acting like Quartey was bludgeoning Oscar throughout the fight when really the only time he landed more than 2 good rights in the round was in the 9th, and Oscar ate them and fired back his own shots.

fact is, in a close fight you cant get put on your ass and then beaten all over the ring in the last round like that. oscar sealed it late like he did in most of his fights in the 90s

 

Here is how I look at that fight. First 5 rounds.....Could Oscar have been up 3-2 in rounds? Without any question at all. So, if Oscar wins 3 of the first 5 and then wins 2 of the last three. He gets a draw. He wins 5 rounds and gets a 10-8 round in the last stanza for a draw.

And if you have him possibly winning the last 3, he gets the win.


Quartey only has himself to blame for not pulling the throttle during rounds 7, 8 and 9. He was the fighter who had the best spell during the fight. Those rounds weren't that close because Oscar's wasn't busy and Quartey was out-jabbing him and throwing in the ocassional right hand. While these rounds were still 10-9, they were the clearest 10-9 rounds of the fight.

When it came down to it, De La Hoya was the one who gambled the most during the entire fight. Only a complete fool would argue that. Winning the last round doesn't mean you deserve to win the fight. But the bottom line is that, that won the fight for him.

 

Probably because there's no case he beat Sturm, I don't think most Oscar fans analysis of the Whitaker and Quartey fights stand up because they rate the largely ineffectiveness of Oscar's aggression in those fights while marking down Trinidad for ineffective aggression against Oscar. You need to be consistent

I think DLH-Quartey 2, DLH-Whitaker 2 and DLH-Trinidad 2 would all make interesting fights, in what adjustments would be made particularly or if they'd pan out the same way. I certainly see Oscar boxing differently against Trinidad and maybe Whitaker would be faded enough to make it a clear win if they fought, say a year later. Quartey I just see him struggling with every time as Quatey has the better jab, defence and timing and OScar doesn't have a good enough right counter

It hurts his legacy that either he or Arum didn't make these fights and they were all there to be made as Oscar was the cash cow, much like Mayweather/Pacquaio is now

 

IMO Whitaker won that fight and that speaks more to Whitaker's greatness than DLH.. past his prime.. prime weight.. and all cocained out.. facing an Oscar in his prime...

I feel he beat Felix... so that was one that he got unlucky with....

Mosley 2 goes either way for me.. No robbery and it just depends on what i'm looking for each time I watch it...

Sturm decision was a joke.. but then again Oscar had no business at that weight...

All in all.. Oscar is a great fighter.. and very good h2h at 140... but pretty much ONLY there imo

 

The thing is, the Quartey, Whitaker, and Trinidad fights are all different. You act like they were carbon copies of each other with the roles reversed; they weren't. It's perfectly consistent and reasonable to argue Oscar won all three of those fights.

The main difference between Oscar in the Quartey/Whitaker fights vs Trinidad in the DLH fight is simple. Oscar was a MUCH more effective aggressor against Quartey and Whitaker than Trinidad was against Oscar. Oscar straight up tooled Trinidad for the first 10 rounds. At most, you can give Trinidad 3 of the first 10, plus 11 and 12. Most fans are less generous. Oscar shut Trinidad's offense down completely in that fight, while at the same time he cut up and swelled up Trinidad's face, busted his nose, etc. He was landing solidly and with authority, while Trinidad could only follow him in straight lines. He wasn't able to land much of anything during that fight, even in the last two rounds when Oscar wasn't throwing anything back.

Both the Whitaker and Quartey fights were close affairs, but to act like those guys tooled Oscar like Oscar tooled Trinidad is untrue. Quartey started the fight very slowly due to ring rust, and spent most of the first 4 rounds trying to find his rhythm and timing against Oscar. Oscar simply started much faster, landed more on Quartey than Quartey did on him, and dictated the pace and had Quartey on the defensive. Quartey got into a groove in round 5 and started boxing very well for the middle of the fight. He looked really impressive and had Oscar befuddled/gunshy/discouraged until round 10, when Oscar got back into it and wobbled him. I thought Quartey rebounded well in round 11, and gave him the round, but Oscar took the 12th handily. True, Quartey might have impressively won the middle of the fight, but that's not enough to make up for the fact he took too long to get rolling, and that Oscar's aggression was effective enough to both start fast and close strongly. If Quartey fought the way he did from rounds 5-9 the entire fight, he'd have won it. But he didn't. He found his groove for those rounds. You act like he was doing that the entire fight. He wasn't.

As for the Whitaker fight, it was a close fight, but again, Oscar's aggression was more effective than Trinidad's was against him. You seem to act like Oscar was hitting air in that fight; I guess that air somehow closed up Whitaker's eye and had him clowning and spoiling nonstop. Almost all the solid blows in that fight were being landed by Oscar. Whitaker threw tons of flicker jabs without much snap on them that were parried by Oscar's gloves. About the only thing he could do with that was momentarily disrupt Oscar's vision before fleeing back. Oscar, meanwhile, caught Whitaker with some hard uppercuts and right hands. I will give Whitaker some credit though, as he basically neutralized Oscar's vaunted left hook, but the bottom line is that in order to actually hit Oscar solidly, he would have had to go with more in-and-out movement, which he didn't do because he didn't want to make himself vulnerable to Oscar's power. So he stayed out of range and made it difficult for Oscar to get him, but most of Whitaker's punches themselves were short of the mark and lacked snap. Whitaker certainly didn't put on a clinic that had Oscar tripping over his own feet while his head was getting snapped back by a sledgehammer jab like you claim.

All of these fights are different affairs that have to be looked at as such. You can't compare one fight to another and then try to claim that differences in how you scored one fight invalidates how you score another fight. It's more complex than that. It's perfectly fair and consistent to score all three of those fights to Oscar.

And as for rematches, Oscar likely does better in all of them. That was Oscar's first fight at 147, and he would have settled into the weight, been more comfortable, and come in with a different gameplan, all against a more aged Whitaker. A rematch favored Oscar more than it favored Whitaker. Whitaker's best chance to beat Oscar was in his first fight at the weight; the odds only get worse for him later on.

As for Trinidad, I doubt Oscar leaves it in the hands of the judges in a rematch; we probably get a shootout, in which case Oscar's superior handspeed, chin, and technique carry the day. At 147 their power was pretty similar honestly. Trinidad was always a slow starter, and it wouldn't surprise me if Oscar came out guns blazing early to put him away or put him in an insurmountable points hole.

Finally, as for Quartey, if they had a rematch, Oscar definitely shows up in better shape for the rematch than he did in the first fight. I think that was part of why he was so listless in the middle rounds; in addition to being gunshy and discouraged, he was probably a little gassed by then too; I think he weighed 162 on fight night for Quartey, way above the norm for him in that era (he usually weighed 152 or 154 on fight night as a welterweight.) If the rematch took place at 154, that favors Oscar even more as 1) Quartey wasn't nearly as effective up there, and 2) Oscar himself developed significantly improved defensive counterpunching skills, along with a much better lead and counter right that would have helped him out against Quartey's jab.

As far as the rematches go, it's already been mentioned that he was scheduled to fight the winner of a Quartey/Whitaker fight in 1998 that fell through, and Quartey dropped off the map after fighting Oscar in 1999, only resurfacing more than a year later at 154 while Oscar was still at 147. With regards to Trinidad, Oscar explains in his book that they wanted a rematch, met with Trinidad's people to discuss one, and that 1) Trinidad's people wanted it at 154, whereas Oscar wanted it at 147, and 2) Trinidad raised the monetary demands. So that killed the chance for a rematch later in 1999 or early 2000, and Trinidad's subsequent retirement/stiff monetary demands/refusal to fight at 154 eliminated any chance for a rematch from 2001-2004.

 

I say again and I'm not sure what is being missed here... Whitaker was past him prime.. past his prime weight and coke'd out of his mind... White Oscar was prime at close to, if not his prime weight. Oscar hit more air then he landed on Whitaker, which made him like amateurish at times... I mean really.. whitaker even landed more and scored the ONLY KD of the fight.. To say all he did was land little flicking jabs is funny. Oscar NEVER came close to hurting Whitaker let alone put him down. In fact, the fight shouldn't even have been as close as it was considering the lame point deduction for Whitaker for an ACCIDENTAL headbutt. Point is, I believe Oscar beat Trindad... Close fight with Ike.. Lost to Whitaker..

 

One of the best fighters of the 1990s, although not at the level of Jones, Hopkins or Morales.

Probably the best welterweight since Leonard.

 

Fair assessment.

 

I think that Oscar could be ranked higher than Hopkins and Morales, Morales is a warrior ,

Hopkins is a smart tectition outside the ring , fought a lot of crappy mw's contenders , beat a Tito that Oscar had already beaten , lost vs Jones & priced himself out of a rematch , was chased out of MW by Taylor , Beat Mason Dixon who had to Shed a lot of weight, dragged Winky and Pavlik up in weight (still both good wins), Oscar (a former SFW) was matching Hopkins before the KO , after he left MW he was in Quasi retirement just hovering around like a valture long for pray, looking for boxers that he could beat and ones that he held an edge on. Lost vs Calzage , while the street soldier was faking low blows and faking injury to catch his beath , did not want to face Dawson , when he did the ''Gangsta" faked injury and cowarded out as he knew he was going to get beaten. Hopkins saw the Roy was shot to **** and wanted his revenge

Oscar fought everyone and won most of his big bouts , lost a few but that is what happens when you fight every one.

Oscar at WW fought Sweet Pea , Ike , Tito and SSM , none of these guys fought each other , apart from Tito beating a shot Sweet Pea. Sweet Pea, Ike and Tito were already at WW , why didn't they fight each other? if they did then there would be a few losses to hand out,

 

Hopkins calculated cherrypicking reminds me of a certain someone who avoided fighting the winner of a significant fight(in which he previously stated he he would fight the winner of) in order to fight a lightweight in a perceived mismatch that nobody wanted to see.

 

Damn good post. I rate Oscar higher than Morales as much as I love both.

 

Ridiculous post

You could make the same ridiculous criticisms of Oscar cherry picking:

Whitaker - looked past it in his past 3 fights
Trinidad - drained
Quartey - inactive recovering from malaria
Mosley - lightweight moving up
Mayweather - much smaller only 3 fights above 140, first fight at 154 in a tiny ring
Hopkins - 38 and past prime
Vargas - coming off a beating and 2 bad performances
Mosley 2 - hadn't won in what 3-4 fights and 2-3 years
Chavez - past it
Pacqauio - 1 fight above 130lbs coming up to 147lbs

I wouldn't make these criticisms and I wouldn't say 'lost against Trinidad' which you've done with the controversial Calzaghe fight at the age of 43. But Delahoya's career is stage managed better than Hopkins

Having said that Delahoya can be ranked above Morales and generally was when both were champion, he was generally ranked above Hopkins too but Hopkins dominance speaks for itself, although I agree with you he cherry picked a little, Delahoya did the same though

There's some serious Oscar tinted glasses going on here bro, yes the fights were different but basically Oscar lost on a round by round basis against Quartey, Whitaker maybe he has an argument. As for the rematches the reason they didn't happen was either Delahoya not wanting them or Arum not wanting them, 1 or the other, take you're pick and leave the excuses at the door