De La Hoya Wins Uninspired Decision

Though he gave a much more respectable account of himself than many had expected, Stevie “2 Pound” Forbes just didn’t have the size or the work-rate to overcome Oscar De La Hoya in their fight Saturday at the Home Depot Center. The Golden Boy coasted to a unanimous decision, with two judges scoring it 119-109 and another calling it a shutout for Oscar at 120-108. I was a little more generous, giving it to De La Hoya at 118-110.
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↵Coming into the ring to “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This”, Forbes looked confident and strong early, shucking and jiving, razzling and dazzling, and on the whole looking at ease retreating and counterpunching. For his part, Oscar was fierce and focused in the ring, but Stevie was loose and light on his feet, and found a right-hand counter over Oscar’s jab that worked for him time and time again in the early going. After the first few rounds, De La Hoya’s face showed more overall damage than after his entire fight with Floyd Mayweather, with welts under both eyes and a cut on the bridge of his nose.
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↵The tide turned conclusively in the sixth, however, when Oscar got off with a seven- or eight-punch combo, and Forbes pulled away from the exchange with blood trickling down his right eye. Suddenly, all of the smaller man’s bravado seemed to dissipate in the cool Carson evening. He fought valiantly from there on out, but mostly provided able target practice for The Golden Boy. The highlight of the fight occurred in the 10th round, when Oscar sent Forbes reeling to the ropes with a series of wide power shots, only to be backed off by a Forbes left hook. Stevie then launched into a flurry of his own that brought roars from the crowd.
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↵But there were boos on the evening as well, especially in the later rounds when the crowd seemed eager for a knockout. For his part, Forbes seemed happy to have survived the onslaught, saying after the fight that “it was a great honor to fight Oscar, great to have the opportunity to get in there and not go down.”
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↵In the end, everything worked out exactly as Oscar had hoped, a reported sellout of 27,000 in the arena on a beautiful night in L.A., and a convincing victory over an elusive fighter who at times showed a decided resemblance to De La Hoya’s next opponent, the one and only Floyd Money May.
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↵That said, there must be at least some small concern from The Golden Boy’s camp after this tune-up effort. Forbes didn’t look particularly quick, yet he scored heavily on Oscar and at times got the better of exchanges that a younger De La Hoya would have dominated. Of course, there’s a good bit of ring-rust on Oscar, and that’s the point of the whole exercise -- to shake it off and be at his best come September. But there just wasn’t much on display in the ring tonight to lead one to believe that his rematch with Floyd is going to turn out any differently than the first fight did, and for that reason alone this victory over Stevie Forbes has at least a small undercurrent of disappointment.↵