By Doug Fischer
We’re a week away from Oscar De La Hoya vs. Steve Forbes – the first stadium fight to take place in the greater Los Angeles area since the 1960s and perhaps the biggest Southern California boxing event since… well, since the last time the Golden Boy fought in (or near) his home town.
That was almost eight years ago when De La Hoya, then a once-beaten 27-year-old former four-division title holder who was still in his prime, clashed with Shane Mosley, an undefeated dynamo and fellow Southern Californian whose pro boxing career was also peaking.
The first pro contest between the friendly So. Cali. rivals created quite a buzz among local fight fans and sports media, but to outside observers (mainly the old guard among the East Coast media and Las Vegas odds makers who installed Goldie as a 3-to-1 favorite) De La Hoya was engaging in an attractive but relatively safe bout.
Most of Mosley’s sterling 34-0 (32) record was complied at lightweight (not the 147-pound division where their first fight took place) and aside from Jon-Jon Molina and James Leija (two cagey veterans that De La Hoya had defeated before Sugar Shane fought them) there were no notable names on the former 135-pound titlist’s resume.
However, to the local gym community, De La Hoya-Mosley was a veritable toss-up. In the boxing clubs where Mosley, who in his prime was perhaps the best gym fighter I ever saw, regularly trained there was no doubt that the Pomona resident was going to shock the boxing world.
Mosley did just that, but an aggressive-minded De La Hoya made it a damn good scrap, one that thoroughly entertained the 20,000 fans who filled the Staples Center (a new venue that was hosting its first big fight).
I’m not expecting anything like the fiercely contested boxing match that took place in June of 2000 next Saturday, but the fan turnout at the Home Depot Center in Carson should eclipse any number gathered for a boxing card in recent memory.
According to Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer, 26,000 tickets have already been sold for the May 3rd event. The Home Depot Center’s soccer stadium, where the L.A. Galaxy and Chivas USA usually play in front of as many as 27,000 soccer fans, has been configured to hold 31,000 boxing fans for De La Hoya-Forbes.
This is great news for the local boxing scene and for the health of the U.S. fight game. I just hope fans are treated to a fight that’s half as good as De La Hoya’s last ‘homecoming’.
I want to be positive, but I can’t help but be a little skeptical.
Forbes is a well schooled boxer with a lot of heart but the former 130-pound titlist simply doesn’t bring the kind of physical strength and dynamic speed and power that Mosley once possessed. De La Hoya is now a 35-year-old promoter who has only fought four times in the past four years (compiling a 2-2 record in this span that more than a few observers think should be 1-3).
The gift decision De La Hoya was the recipient of was, of course, his close points win over Felix Sturm in June of ’04. The unheralded German-based WBO middleweight titlist, who gave an out-of-shape De La Hoya fits for 12 rounds, was thought to be a tune-up for Oscar’s big showdown with Bernard Hopkins later that year.
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