Now that he's retired I feel it's perhaps time to rank this man. Surely he is an all time great, but just how great is he? Close fights with quartey, tito, sturm, floyd, sweet pea and mosley. Barring winky it'd be fair to say he fought everyone around. Where does he figure in your atg list?
Wow 3 polarised opinions straight away. Playing devils advocate here, is salvador sanchez or alexis arguelo really any greater than oscar? I think he has to be behind whittaker, perhaps chavez, but what bout sanchez and arguello?
Sanchez is 10-15 range, Arguello is 16-22 range. Whitaker is a top 10 and JC Chavez is around about De La Hoya's range, 20-25. In my opinion
Oscar is underrated and id say top 30.. Id put Sanchez just above him around 20-25 he wasnt here long but HTH one of the best ever and 3 wins over atg(Dominant over Lopez,Gomez) in a short period count for alot IMO. Id rank Arguello just belowe ODLH at around 30-35. Chavez and Whittaker around 10ish.
I could see the case for him ranking over Sanchez, though I wouldn't be the one making it. Arguello is definitely above him.
Of the top of my head I would think he could maybe rank somewhere around these area's Lightweight top 18 - 25 Light-welterweight top 5 Welterweight top 22 - 30 Junior-Middleweight top 10
It's difficult to think of a fighter, if not impossible, harder to rank to De La Hoya. Special talent and gutsy warrior meets calculating businessman and school girl pin-up. There's something not real about him, almost comical. One thing he should always get plenty of credit for is putting his neck on the line, fighting everybody his management allowed. In the late 90's, as a welterweight, he was a quality fighter; quick, powerful, strong and persistent. His fight against Quartey was rather close, but the manner in which he crossed the finish line was first class. He let ugly absences and silly moments tarnish his name, but the consequential backlash of those decisions has likely gone overboard during the last few years.
Hard to say. But I gotta say I love the guy. What other modern fighter subjected himself to the same schedule of fights and weight challenges that he did. He had holes, and underperformed in a few of his biggest fights. He did some robbing, and he got robbed. But he was exciting, charismatic, and in his prime a bloodthirsty killing. Like Jones after Ruiz his reputation has fallen recently, but take the Oscar who fought at LW and LWW and he ****s a lot of all time greats up in my opinion. Somewhere in the top 40-50. [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doSXJCS3B7U[/ame] As a promotor, I kinda hate the guy.