been rewatching De La Hoyas career. I've always liked Oscar a lot as a fighter. He had a lot of great fights against a lot of very good and great fighters. IMO he's a truly great fighter even though he came short in Some of his big fights. What I'd like to discuss in this thread, I'd like to hear your opinions on DLH? Was he a great fighter? Where do you rank him as a welterweight? Do you think he would've been able to capture a middleweight title in a different era against a different champion? Who is the best fighter you think he wouldve been capable of beating?
DLH was an excellent fighter. Some find him a little difficult to rank due to some of his biggest fights ending in controversial decisions (FWIW I had him beating Tito, drawing with Whitaker, losing to Ike). No one really cares about him getting a gift versus Sturm as DLH was no Middleweight anyway. I'm not really sure how people would look at the Mosley rematch if he had gotten the nod. On one hand, Mosley went on to have success afterwards, most notably destroying Plasterito. On the other hand, Mosley was never really that good at 154 and was in a slump at that stage in his career. I'm not good with overall lists so I don't know where he'd rank all-time at 147. A level below guys like the 2 Sugar Rays or Hearns, I think he and Marlon Starling would have a super close fight. His peak weight class might have actually been 140. So tall and rangy for that weight, very good power, that ramrod jab (his jabbing performance against Miguel Angel Gonzalez was something), solid defense, very good overall skill level, etc.. Not as experienced as he was when he was a WW, but he had 23 pro fights by the time he left 140 and a good number against world champs. When you look at the divisions he fought in and look at it nowadays, it's hard to picture today's fighters beating DLH. DLH of 2001-03 would handily beat Canelo at 154. I don't know if Canelo beats the DLH of 2006-07 either. DLH was 34 and had been inactive and still managed to take 3-4 rounds off Mayweather and make Floyd look terrible offensively.
