DLH legacy

Don't you think it pretty much went in the gutter in the couple of years.

I think he'll be rebembered as a B fighter compared to the great. A wilfred Benitez at best.

 

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yeah, def not one of the greatest....he was a star but not an all time great fighter....

 

Well, let see......
Losses to Pernell, Ike, Tito, Mosley-1, Mosley-2, Hopkins, Sturm, PBF, JJ Molina.....The guy is a B-level fighter at best......

 

Way to dampen Floyd's victory.

De La Hoya? A modern great, at best. Definitely not all-time and not the best of his time either.

 

Floyd is an over-rated punk. His biggest victories are over perennial losers like Judah and Mitchell :nono:

 

I'd rank DLH, Mosley, Tito all on a par. Above PBF, but below "Great" as in SRL, Hearns & Hagler.

 

One of the greats of this era. No one really stands out from the rest, IMO.

The controversial nature of some of his biggest fights against the top guys (Quartey, Trinidad, Whitaker) hurts his legacy, as does his real defining division, but he still took on great opposition and beat a lot of quality fighters.

I know Floyd is smaller and all but he's younger and closer to his peak, and Oscar fought well against him in defeat. Maybe it's a stretch to say Saturday's fight helped his legacy a bit, but it didn't hurt.

 

For me, PBF legacy was hurt more than DLH's on sat. night.
People were comparing him to SRL.
The fact that he barely squeeked by a past prime DLH who had fought once in 2 yrs pretty much puts paid to that.
If anything, it proves to me that PBF is below DLH, Tito & possibly Mosley, who are themselves a level below SRL, Hearns & Hagler in the all-time great stakes.

 

Oscars legacy is as follows: he benefitted from PBF esque treatment to the extent that he got so soft as to "lose" to someone like PBF. Thats his legacy. He was so good he had the opportunity to blow it all. And did. Thats how fucking good he was. You have to be real good to actually get around to blowing it that big.

When I see Oscar "lose" a fight like that for the want of one extra round of Stamina, I think of just how badly boxing has slipped. Think of Archie Moore going to WAR with Rocky for 9 rounds...when Archie was like 40. Or Walcott, when Walcott was well into his late 30's, going to war with Ezzard Charles and Marciano. Even, by comparison, the diluted, controversial "win" SRL had over Hagler.

The guy was so fucking rich that, at age 34, he just didn't bother to train anymore. Its pathetic. He seemed happy to blow it versus a guy that couldn't do a fucking thing with him if he was the same age.

 

I don't see how one fight can do that. Oscar is past his prime, but it's not like Floyd is really suited to fight at 154. We saw what can happen when you move up in weight at a class you don't really belong in. Oscar got a gift against Felix Sturm and was stopped in his 2 fights at MW. Mosley didn't exactly fight well at 154. Not counting those over-the-welterweight-limit fights in 2005, it took Mosley like 6 fights to look good at 154, and that was against a shot fighter in Vargas.

 

IMO, it's legacy was hurt by saturday's fight. Sure he made it close, but he was the bigger, stronger man and he really needed a victory, he should have tried to make it a war, not a tactical fight, but it seems he'd rather not get hit and be a promoter than to be a real ring legend.

 

Oscar de la Hoya fought a much better fight two nights ago than I expected, but there's one thing he did that will HUGELY affect my view of his legacy. As everyone was saying, Oscar should have used his jab more. The reason he didn't was that Mayweather was countering with the overhand right every time Oscar used the jab. You may kid about Mayweather's power, but it was the power in his overhand right that kept De la Hoya from throwing that jabs that might have won him the fight.

A true warrior might have taken those punches and jabbed anyway, to hell or high water. That's what Hagler did against Hearns. That's what Sugar Ray Robinson did against Gene Fullmer. That's what Ali did against Joe Frazier, George Foreman and I can't count how many other fighters. I didn't rank Oscar among the top 15 fighters of all time in lightweight or welterweight before this fight, and watching how the power of Mayweather - who's really no bigger than most of the top lightweights - stopped De la Hoya, I feel vindicated. There's no doubt that De la Hoya is very, very good and that he had a remarkable career, but the greats take one step further.

 

Oscar = Boxing to ALL nonhardcore fans and to some hardcore.

That's how BIG his legacy is and will be. This guy moved his chess pieces ensuring him to be around the sport of boxing a long long time.

 

:nono: Benitez was better than Oscar.

 

Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson are boxing to more people.

 

Back in the 90's yes. Those guys are pretty much done. Oscar is still going...He is probably better KNOWN than Sugar Ray Leonard or Robinson.

 

Oscar's done, too. He'll fight Mayweather again and get owned even harder. Him fighting Vargas or Mayorga's no different than Holyfield fighting Fres Oquendo.

 

Holyfield was more popular.

 

I never thought that PBF was in the league of SRL, Hearns or Hagler (yes, some here have said as much). Also, he hasn't done enough for me to regard him as highly as DLH or Tito. Saturdays fight just sealed the deal 4 me on those two points.
You make an excellent point about weights, but I only really consider DLH & PBF to be 1 division removed from each other.
Squeaking by a past prime DLH who had fought once in 2 yrs in the way that he did is not enough for me to consider him any better than a touch below DLH, Tito & possibly Mosley. By the way, that still makes him a damn good fighter. Trouble is, he & his fans carry on as though he is an all-time great. His performance on sat night did not indicate as much.
Could you imagine what a prime SRL, or Hearns would have done against the DLH that was in the ring against PBF?

 

Why would you say that ?

He just beat the number 1 P4P fighter ...

I had Oscar up 115/113 ...

PBF punched AIR and GLOVE all night long ...

 

I consider you an idiot, so I don't really care about your opinion. DLH did not win that fight, even a draw would have been a robbery

 

Well , I guess if you count hitting "air" and "gloves" all night long winning , then I guess thats your opinion however stupid it may be ...

 

I don't think this one fight makes or breaks it for Floyd's standing. I wasn't very impressed and think he needs more work to do...but outside of suffering a terrible one-sided defeat, I don't think there was anything that Mayweather could have done on Saturday that would clearly make him above or below the rest of the greats of this era.

He's simply just one of the greats of this era, he doesn't really stand out. If he's going to stand out then he's going to have to beat some of the top guys at welterweight.

 

Based on what?

That statement is questionable at best.

 

Getting back to the topic, Hoya's legacy has two main strikes against it:

1) His (seeming) quit job against Hopkins in what was unquestionably the biggest and most important fight of his career.

2) The indecisive results of so many of his fights against the very elite fighters (ie: Whitaker, Tito, Quartey, Mosley, etc.). In these cases, he proved he was good enough to compete with all these guys, but rarely emerged as clearly superior to any of them. People will argue forever about which way these decisions could've gone (and personally, for the record, I thought Hoya won his fights with Whitaker, Tito, and the Mosley rematch), but all those fights were close and in the end, the result left open for debate. Plus, whether you thought he won or lost, his performances in these fights were generally not what you'd call stirring or impressive. When Hoya was impressive/decisive, it was against opponents that were really a notch or two below the very elite (ie: Ruelas, Gonzales, Vargas). In short, he lacked the kind of win(s) that Ray Leonard had over Hearns and Duran, Ali had over Liston and Foreman, or even Winky Wright had over Tito and Mosley.

The other side to this argument is that while Hoya was not dominant or impressive in many fights, he himself was rarely ever dominated or totally impotent against any one style or opponent, something that very, very few of the other elite fighters of his generation can claim. Even in his most embarassing loss vs. Hopkins, he still was putting up a competitive fight until its sudden ending. Even fighting well past his peak as he has to this point, he was never outright blown out or dominated in any of his losses the way guys like Tito, Roy Jones, Barrera, Mosley, and others have been. Given that, while Hoya may not necessarily have been the #1 best fighter of his generation (though IMO, he probably has as good a claim as any other fighter), he probably was the most well-rounded of them.

 

Well said.

 

can't argue with that.

still, i don't know if it's fair to completely discount ODH's wins over Chavez, Ruelas, Hernandez and MAGO, as many people do, and focus instead solely on his fights at 147 and above. These were all guys that many picked to beat ODH. And who were all either undefeated or nearly undefeated.

obviously, he grew out of fighting at 130, 135 and then 140, but does that mean his wins there should be completely discounted? seems like many people think they should and i disagree.

 

I'd go along with that