Oscar De La Hoya vs Felix Trinadad: greater fighter

Yeah, I don't get the line of thinking that Trinidad is clearly better or greater, you'd have to have the old blinkers on to think so imo.

Trinidad was naturally bigger than Oscar and had the height and frame suited to move up in weight successfully above welter. He was physically huge at 147 where Oscar looked more like a merely solid welter; you could tell the latter was undersized and ordinary at 154 whereas Trinidad was clearly well suited to the weight. He was bigger than Carr to me where Carr and DLH looked more of an even physical match. I don't like the Joppy and Sturm comparison either. Sturm was a better fighter, if nothing special; Joppy was thoroughly mediocre and better suited stylistically for Trinidad to take on. Sturm with his high guard and stiff accurate jab - not unlike Wright - would've stood a good chance of making Tito look just as mediocre as DLH.

DLH was less dominant than Trinidad in the middle sections if their careers (the early part too, of Titos) but he faced clearly better competition on the whole on a more consistent basis. People seem to forget the succession of mediocrities Trinidad fought at welter from 95-98 without facing any of the stronger titleists kicking around at the time. He went backwards as a fighter imo during that time compared to the earlier version who ran over Blocker.

There's DLHs body of work at 140 and below to consider where he enjoyed the kind of size and power advantage that Trinidad enjoyed at 147. He was green and didn't beat sterling opposition but looked a brutal force nonetheless.

Then there's the matter of their actual fight, which DLH won without any shadow of a doubt despite his somewhat dubious decision to outright run throughout the end rounds. Neither fighter looked great in that fighter tbh; Oscar's tactics were pretty basic and unsophisticated but Tito looked downright clueless for long stretches.

With regards to Whitaker, he was an absolute shell of himself when he faced Tito. He'd lost his offensive sharpness, voluminosity and movement when he faced DLH but still possessed a good share of his defensive reflexes and manoeuvres. Against Tito he had very little left other than toughness and some of the muscle memory of his defensive repertoire. Even then an outright smackhead I thought he more or less held his own until the halfway point, after which he no longer had the conditioning to compete. It reminded of Ortiz against Buchanan, the early part of that fight, with Ortiz an ageing, balding alcoholic only in condition to go a few rounds but still showing glimpses of his old self and competing well until his legs gave out and he wisely quit rather than take the shellacking that Pea did against Tito.

All this said, I've never really compared the careers of Oscar and Tito in real depth. My instinct is to rate Oscar higher, if not by a great amount. I don't know though.