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The news yesterday that the long-negotiated Oscar De La Hoya/Manny Pacquiao fight is officially on for December 6th came as no surprise to most people in the boxing community. Oscar’s oft-thwarted search for an opponent worthy of his farewell bout had left him with nowhere else to turn, a fact that Pacquiao was keenly aware of. When the negotiations stalled a few weeks ago over the money split, Oscar’s team started floating other names as possible fill-ins for the December date, Sergio Mora and then Paul Williams, both fraught with huge problems. The idea that The Golden Boy would end his storied career against a fighter of Mora’s caliber was simply preposterous, and the idea that he would duck the challenge of Antonio Margarito, the consensus welterweight champ, for Paul Williams was even more so.↵
Oscar-Pacquiao: Weight-ing Is the Hardest Part
↵↵For Oscar to have a stratospherically big event as his last night, it came down to Pacquiao or nothing, so he went back to the negotiating table, threw a little more cake on Manny’s plate, and – bada bing – here we are with the world’s next superfight, one that looks suspiciously like the world’s last superfight (Oscar/Floyd). In other words, The Movie Star vs. The Midget. ↵
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↵Mayweather was at least a plausible opponent for De La Hoya size-wise, although anyone who watched that fight will remember the first thought that leapt to mind when they both came to the center of the ring in the first round – “Jeez, Oscar’s huge!” The first three rounds or so of that fight I felt like the usually ultra-calm Floyd had some legitimate fear in his gaze merely for being aware that he was so dramatically on the short end of the size differential. (Check out some Oscar/Floyd highlights below.) ↵
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↵↵And hell, Floyd was welterweight champ at that point. He only jumped one weight class to face Oscar. Pacquiao will be jumping two, from 135 to 147, and thus far in his career Manny has only fought once at 135. For the four years prior to that, he was a 130-pounder, the weight at which he really made his fame.↵
↵↵Granted Pac Man usually blows up after the weigh-in and goes into the ring re-hydrated in the 140-145 range. But given his height and frame, I don’t think he can get much heavier than that, and I don’t think he’ll want to. I imagine that he’ll weigh in somewhere around 145 and be the same weight on fight night. Meanwhile, Oscar practically will have to kill himself to make 147. When he re-hydrates, he could go into that ring as heavy as 160. ↵
↵↵Bottom line – there’s likely going to be a two-weight-class disparity between the men when they get in the ring. For that fact alone, I honestly can’t believe that Oscar wants this bout as his swan song. Yes Pacquiao is the pound-for-pound champion right now, and yes he’s a mega-star around the world so he ups the PPV projections considerably. But think of it this way – the real reason that Oscar is ducking Margarito is because it’s a lose-lose situation for him fighting another hard-nosed Mexican cut from the mold of Chavez. The Mexican community wouldn’t embrace him in that kind of match-up no matter what he did, and so he figures that there’s no upside in a Margarito bout for him.↵
↵↵To my mind, the Pacquiao fight is the same scenario with the entire sports community at large. Because of the size difference between him and Manny, and because that will be THE headline of this fight above all others, if he loses he’ll look terrible, and if he wins, it will be like, “well, of course he won, he’s the bigger man BY FAR.” There’s no upside for him whatsoever, absolutely nothing for De La Hoya to gain out of this bout but a big payday. At this stage of the game, I’m shocked that he’s still on the “if it makes dollars, it makes sense” tip. He’s made so many dollars, if he wanted to the guy could afford to make his own sense. Instead, he’s taking the easy way out of his own career. ↵
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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
