Round by Round: Weekly Boxing Notes

Tito and the Golden Boy↵
↵There aren’t many fights out there for Tito Trinidad that make real boxing sense to me, and for that matter, there aren’t all that many similar fights for Oscar De La Hoya either. Though Oscar is far more viable as a fighter right now, the fact is that neither of these guys is really relevant to the current scene. They each garner a lot of attention in the sport for the same reason – they’re huge stars of a previous era and their names alone put fannies in the seats.↵
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↵Given their past, however, I do very much like the idea of them fighting each other, and that seems to be on the table right now in a way that it hasn’t been for years. For those of you unaware of the history, Oscar and Tito fought in 1999 in what was then a battle of undefeated welterweights and one of the biggest non-heavyweight PPV attractions in history. Oscar dominated the early rounds with an effortless in-and-out boxing clinic, at times making Trinidad seem flat-footed and incompetent. But later in the fight, he chose to stay away from Tito, giving up some crucial rounds in a strategy that turned out to be disastrous, not to mention anything but manly. He ended up losing on the scorecards in what remains one of the most controversial decisions in fistic history. (Check out the last two rounds below, in which Oscar is most egregiously on his bicycle -- almost ten years later, I still can’t believe that he so blatantly ran from Tito at the end of this fight.)↵

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Oscar plans to fight his final bout on December 6th, and now that Floyd Mayweather seems definitively off the scene, the other potential opponents that have been mentioned as possibilities are Miguel Cotto and Manny Pacquiao. Neither of these fights has a clear “why?” to it. Why exactly would Oscar take on Manny Pacquiao, a man who at this point is naturally three weight classes below him? Why move down to welterweight to fight Cotto, a man who has no crossover Q factor right now and who would likely beat the crap out of him?↵↵For Oscar’s last hurrah, the Tito fight makes infinitely more sense than either of these bouts. Why do it? To redeem himself, in his final trip to the ring, for what he himself has often called the low point of his career. It makes good sense, and what’s more, it makes good dollars and sense – an Oscar/Tito rematch is almost guaranteed to generate respectable PPV numbers. The only obstacle to the fight is one that has been there for a while now – weight. Oscar always has said he wouldn’t go above 160 to fight Tito, while Tito now says that he can’t even make 160. If I were betting right now, though, I’d say there’s a very good chance that the fight will get made at the middleweight limit. It’s just too right as the bout to serve as The Golden Boy’s grand finale, and it also provides the considerable boon of posing dramatically less risk to The Golden Boy’s Golden Face.↵

↵↵(For my prediction on tomorrow night’s big Pacquiao/Diaz fight, check out my full preview over at No Mas.)↵

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