I'm not here to make excuses for Oscar De La Hoya's woeful performance, non-performance really, against Manny Pacquiao last week, but I will pass along a couple of things I have heard from credible sources that indicate that there were clearly problems in De La Hoya's training camp. First off, I was told in recent days that De La Hoya was on weight nearly a month before the fight. That is insane, especially since De La Hoya had not fought at welterweight since 2001. He should never depleted himself so soon before the fight, which might explain why he was only 145 pounds at the official weigh in, two less than he could have been. Also, I was told that De La Hoya sparred upwards of 180 rounds in preparation, an extraordinarily high number for an older fighter and clearly too much. Whatever De La Hoya had left in the tank when he went into training, he clearly left it in the gym. It was his first time training with Nacho Beristain and it seems to me that De La Hoya was overtrained, especially given that he only put on two pounds from the time of the weigh in until stepping on HBO's unofficial scale at 147 pounds on fight night. He was actually 1½ pounds less than the supposedly smaller man, Pacquiao, when they entered the ring. Under normal circumstances, De La Hoya probably should have entered the ring in the mid-150s. None of that is meant to discredit Pacquiao's tremendous performance in any way, but I found it interesting. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?entryID=3766647&name=rafael_dan
It doesn't make sense to me that a guy with as much experience as DLH who controls all the money would let himself get that depleted and overspar that much. I can see it for some kid who thinks his trainer knows best and can't think for himself, but that's not Oscar. I also don't get why DLH changes trainers so damned much. Is there any big name trainer out there that hasn't trained him by now?
To me this shows that DLH doesn't know himself after all these years and is lacking some self confidence. Why would he be switching trainers like underwear every fight? It makes no sense. It seems like he is always searching for a better trainer with each change, not believing enough in himself to settle down with one.
He wanted Sr for the Mayweather JR fight. Sr wanted too much money (10% of the purse, what trainers get of their fighters purses but with DLH its like 2 Mil) He ditched Freddy for a bad gameplan against Jr and went with Sr for Forbes. Then Sr opted to train someone over DLH for DLHs Pac fight.
