Its always been about the money for Oscar. How marketable a fight was seemed to dictate the opponants he chose. He has a lot of good names on his record but really how many were at or even near their best when he fought them? It seemed Team DLH wanted fighters with name recognition but sometimes by the time a guys is recognised he is already on the way out. Obviously there is Tito..young and in great form with a fairly long reign coming into that fight. You could say Mosley in the first fight but some may argue that Sugar was at his best at lightweight. Often people do bring up the fact that Shane was smaller then a lot of the guys he was fighting at this time. There is an arguement for Leija and MAG aswell, possibly Gernaro Hernandez but he was kind of away from his best weight..his post De la Hoya achievments seem to support this. And they werent exactly special fighters that are going to bolster Oscar's legacy that much. How heavily does this factor into his ranking alltime?
Not sure exactly....you can always look for reasons to say "so-and-so was past his peak". You can argue that Hernandez and Gonzalez were above their best weight (Gonzalez had done nothing of note in a year and a half), Quartey was off for almost a year and a half, Mosley was less experienced at 147, Trinidad had been having weight problems for awhile, Vargas looked shitty post-Tito, Hopkins was almost 40, Mayweather and Pacquiao were too small. I think objectively speaking, you can say that the majority of these guys were in or pretty close to their primes. DLH's opposition level was very impressive. His performances against the top fighters, and the inconclusive nature of a good number of them, makes him harder to rank.
On the surface I do agree it is impressive. But so many names were clearly past their best Camacho, Chavez, Campas, Paez, Mayorga, Sweet Pea..A lot of big names on his record that helped him get to the status he has today. And many more could be argued werent at their peak.
Besides Chavez and Whitaker, I don't think too many think much of the wins over guys like Camacho, Campas, Paez, and Mayorga. I think DLH was Whitaker's last great fight. I had it even, but DLH had fought Whitaker better than anyone else before that besides Rivera. Chavez was a solid win. Nothing special, but a solid win over an a fading (but still pretty good) champ.
You could argue that Hoya was the first man to ever really beat Ruelas, doing so in two rounds to boot.