Some may rate Delahoya as a Top10 ATG in 20years

Randall amounted to little?

Randall was considered the best 140 lb fighter in the world in 1996. He then lost a technical decision to Coggi.

Randall was more highly regarded at the time than Chavez. Chavez was just a bigger name and a bigger payday, but Randall in reality had beaten JCC 2 out of 2 times.

Forrest was more seasoned and experienced at WW than Mosley was at the time DLH decided to face Mosley.

It's generally the same pattern. Fighters or their teams choose the more lucrative bouts.

It happened with the whole Duran/Hearns/McCallum situation. It happened when Oscar/Top Rank chose to go after Chavez when everyone knew Randall was the superior guy at that point. When Michael Spinks chose to give up his IBF belt and avoid the HBO/Don King tournament and fought Cooney instead for more $$.

 

I am so sick of the revisionist history surrounding the career of Mike McCallum.

"They all ducked him". The fact is that no one ducked him. He chose to fight at 154 and win a vacant belt against Sean Mannion (who?).

He could have fought at 160 where there was only one championship to shot for. But he would have to fight his way thru a minefield of contenders like Davison, Parker, Hamsho, Green, Scypion, Sibson, Epps, Obel, and more to earn his shot. Then he would have had to defeat the Marvelous One in order to win it.

He took that easier route for a reason.

 

Boxing is a business. Why fight Randall for $3 million when you can fight Chavez for $9 million.

Looking back over De La Hoya's career and how many great fighters he has fought, its completely ridiculous for anyone to come the conclusion he ducked anyone. Where is the evidence?. People say to themsleves "Well he never fought that guy, so it automatically means he ducked him".

Trinidad was a far more dangerous fight for De La Hoya than Forrest, certainly when it comes to power. Although looking back in hindsight, Forrest would have done much better than Trinidad.

Trinidad was a marquee name during the late 90's, Forrest wasn't.

 

It's the same old story. When the top two guys fight, unless he wants to be left out in the cold the number three guy had better be fighting the number four.

 

IMO you could make a decent argument that DLH only lost to Mosley in the first fight, to Strum and to Hopkins.

Should you have that opinion you probably could place him top 20 or 30, (given that you also think he looked mighty impressive in his prime, which he more or less did).

As it stands, together with the Mosley, Strum and Hopkins losses, I think a past his prime Whitaker edged him, and the never at any time great Quartey drew with him.

As such, he is not top 20 or 30 in my books.

 

At first, I thought you meant some could rate De La Hoya as being one of the top 10 of the last 20 years, which may be reasonable, but apparently you mean top 10 of all time, which is not.

 

You had to waste bandwidth quoting his entire post for your one sentence answer?

 

The junior lightweight, junior welterweight and junior middleweight classes are not legitimate. There is no point in having such weight classes.

It seems surprising that De La Hoya would stuggle with Whittaker even arguably losing the fight because people seem to think Whittaker was far past his prime by that point.

 

If he got "gift decisions", he was also on the wrong end of a couple of robberies.

 

very good post. you could put a case together for dlh being an top tenner