I don't know if it was supposed to be a tune-up per se, but Tyson was supposed to fight Evander Holyfield in the near future after the Buster Douglas fight... De La Hoya - Strum should have been a spoiler, because Strum basically kicked Oscar's ass, but since Oscar got the gift decision, I don't think you can count that one.
Unless DLH was going to try and boil down to 147 to meet Cotto, that's not true. At 154 even a pre-Marg Cotto gets smashed by Oscar.
Judah-Mayweather to some people on paper was like a Hearns-Leonard then Judah got whopped by Baldomir and the fight lost alot of luster.
I get tired of hearing that...if DeLaHoya was looking slow and old against Forbes at 150, Cotto would have broke him down at that same catch weight
Trinidad went up in weight to 154, beat Troy Waters in anticipation of a Norris fight if I remember correctly but Norris lost. Duddy was supposed to meet Pavlik before losing to Lyell. Calderon was set to fight Canchila, but he lost his title in his rematch with Segura. Calderon was set to fight Viloria, but he was just kayoed a bit ago. RJJ verbally agreed to fight Griffin in a rubbermatch if he beat Tarver. Benitez was discussed as being a contender to Hagler, but was dominated by Hamsho.
I would say De La Hoya-Forbes, though not a spoiler, kind of exposed oscar for being old..I mean he was beat up at the end and a little puffy
I agree Hopkins was pretty much unknown at the time and Jones-Tito was gonna be a big fight.... But Jones warned Tito not to fight Hopkins, Jones knew Hopkins was gonna beat Tito and ruin the fight.
Eric Morales vs Zaheem I think that's his name......Fought on the same card as Pacquiao....Morales still got to fight Pacquiao....Im a big Morales fan did not expect to see him lose like that.
I expect Cotto to struggle with the extra weight and size against Foreman, actually. Even the DLH of the Mayorga-Forbes period was more formidable than Foreman. It's just simply more size and strength than Cotto can handle. That's not a knock on him, everybody has their limits. His limit is big strong welterweights. Even an average size junior middleweight is likely to overwhelm him.
Trinidad vs Hopkins is the best example the in the thread so far IMO. in hindsight it seems pretty absurd that Hopkins would have been considered a stepping stone but Tito was a 3-1 favorite and they were basically already starting to negotiate the RJJ fight which would have been huge. It was assumed that Tito would beat Bhop easily.