Oscar De La Hoya is not an ATG.

It's undisputed that he was an elite and is a future first ballot Hall of Fame fighter, but DLH does not deserve the title of ATG and I have been reviewing his entire run a little more lately.

Let's look at the evidence:

- A controversial win against Whitaker, people are 50/50 on this one, but it was close and an old Whitaker at that who had just struggled greatly with Hurtado.

- A *gift* over Quartey. Note that I did not say 'controversial win', because this one was pretty clear and it's more like 80% of boxing fans scored this for Quartey. Ike was robbed.

- A close loss against Trinidad, that was FAIR. DLH fanboys act like DLH was robbed, but this fight was absolutely a close fight that could have been a draw or a very close Trinidad win and I just watched this the other day and came out with a draw myself, giving Trinidad 2 of the early rounds and DLH's running down the stretch is not even needed for discussion.

- Two losses to Mosely, which this is not a big deal as they were competitive, but lets add them in for the sake of the discussion.

- *Gift* against Sturm. Out of shape sure, but a loss no less in my book and this is universally considered.

- KO 9 loss against Hopkins, no big deal here, but throw it on regardless.

- Avoided Tszyu, Forrest etc. and always fought with his own stipulations in the vein of Ray Leonard.

....................

Best wins -

- Chavez x 2, an older Chavez though.

- Controversial over an older Whitaker, would have been GOOD if it were clear.

- Vargas

- Molina

- Leveled all B level competition very well(I take this into consideration, because it shows the level that he is, which was elite).

...............

So, we have a very good fighter and an undisputed elite level and future Hall of Famer, but he came up short against the other P4P level comp and while being competitive against them, this is still coming up short. He is also a very flawed fighter, with a weak mentality and this is why he was brought along in a protected way and why HE came up short when he absolutely could have won, as he was a phenominal 'talent', which is not disputed.

There you go guys, discuss.:hat

 

Joe is not an ATG yet. I have never claimed that he was ever at any point in my time at this forum, let's stick to discussing DLH's ranking and not Calzaghe, even though everyone knows Calzaghe is my favourite and I rate him very highly in the current scene and instead of just going into a DLH discussion, Calzaghe was mentioned.

 

I forgot to add Oscar's loss to Floyd, where he was about in the same spot as Whitaker was in terms of what he had left. He started out okay but faded horribly down the stretch, as usual. Floyd 8-4 no doubt.

This is not a true negative, but it's there none the less. Even though he fought very good competition, some of the best, I still feel that he avoided some other competition that wouldn't have brought a good payday, thus doing the same old 'fight within the inner circle of big names' routine and he ducked Kostya Tszyu in his jump to Welter, in which Welterweight is when he really started taking on the best opposition.

 

Spot on lefthook, you have to rate consistency. Hopkins dominated most of his competition, which was good competition and maybe not on the level that Hoya took at Welterweight, but dominating them fight after fight is better than not rising to the occassion and struggling with lesser opponents even then.

 

Yes, but think of the numbers that an older Pernell brought, over the younger Tszyu at the time. Pernell had been looking pretty bad lately and the move was to snipe off the ageing legend.

Tszyu was a hungry, dominant younger force and a bigger threat at that point in my opinion.