Agreed. I think De La Hoya acquitted himself well enough (in fights I thought he lost 8-4 in both) vs defensive masters and tacticians in Mayweather and Whitaker, to where I think he has what it takes to beat Locche. I've also just watched Locche vs Hernandez, and the two things I noticed which really troubled Locche were Hernandez's height and power. De La Hoya was a way better puncher, and a bigger guy.
De La Hoya wasn’t really bigger or a better puncher than Hernandez, not for sheer power anyway. And I think it was Hernandez rough housing and specifically his power in close quarters that troubled Locche early. By round 4 or so he’d pretty much solved him and proceeded to school him for the rest of the fight. I think Oscar taking a relatively minimalist approach behind the jab is the way to go.
Absolutely, it was how he imposed his size which troubled Locche. I do think De La Hoya was a bigger puncher than Hernandez (I can't see Carlos having the power to stop someone like Vargas) but I said he was better puncher, not a bigger puncher. I think he sets up his left hook better, which starts to dissuade Locche and make him fight negatively.
Even if you had Whitaker beating De La Hoya, one thing Pernell didn't do enough of was throwing when Oscar missed. Too often he seemed satisfied with himself and admired his work. Rather than improve on that i think Locche does less in terms of offense. De La Hoya would be made to miss a lot, but i think he takes a decision that's less controversial than the one over Whitaker.
Don't underestimate Oscar's low ring IQ. He had the physical tools to beat Locche, but I wouldn't discount Locche at all given the wide gap in ring intelligence here.
I think Oscar ring intelligence is greatly underrated. The only fight where he really had a bad strategy was Mosley 1. rest of the time, it was fine, even if he wasn't the most adaptable fighter.
Agree. And even the Mosley I fight plan, as ill-advised as it may have been in terms of securing victory, did succeed in restoring ODH's reputation following the Trinidad fight. Like you said, other than the Mosley fight, I can't think of a glaring example to support this idea that ODH had no ring smarts. To the extent he struggled with stamina later in several fights you could argue he wasn't conservative enough with his energy. But it's tough to attribute that to his ring IQ and not his conditioning. Maybe another example you could point to is the Mayweather fight and the fact he seemed to stop jabbing later in the fight despite the great success he'd had with it earlier on. But still, this doesn't put him in the category of total dummy in there the way some like to paint him.
