Not to fight him, though. De La Hoya has already dismissed that possibility several times while admitting he thinks about it but knows better than to try. He’s a promoter now who sleeps in silk pajamas. Fighters don’t sleep in silk pajamas — at least not the successful ones.
So when the Golden Boy wrote of Mayweather: “The fight game will be a better one without you in it,” what was the end game? How about to irk Mayweather enough to convince him to come back and face De La Hoya’s No. 1 attraction, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, next spring in the MGM Grand’s brand new arena if Alvarez defeats Miguel Cotto to become middleweight champion in two weeks?
Sure, the agreement is that the Alvarez-Cotto winner will face unified champion Gennady Golovkin next, but if Mayweather came out of retirement for a rematch with Alvarez, the money would be astronomical and, truth be told, Alvarez could avoid the hardest punching middleweight in boxing, at least for a time.
There is little other explanation for De La Hoya’s rant, which ripped Mayweather from pillar to post, beyond their well-documented enmity toward each other. Had De La Hoya fought him as harshly as he wrote about him, he might not have lost that split decision to him eight years ago.
“Let’s face it,” De La Hoya wrote. “You were boring. Just take a look at your most recent performance, your last hurrah in the ring, a 12-round decision against Andre Berto. How to describe it? A bust? A disaster? A snooze fest? An affair so one-sided that on one judge’s card Berto didn’t win a single round? Everyone in boxing knew Berto didn’t have a chance. I think more people watched ‘Family Guy’ reruns that night than tuned in to that pay-per-view bout. But I didn’t mind shelling out $75 for the HD broadcast. In fact, it’s been a great investment. When my kids have trouble falling asleep, I don’t have to read to them anymore. I just play them your Berto fight. They don’t make it past Round 3.”
De La Hoya has a point. I barely made it past three rounds myself and I was in attendance. But the harshest criticism he leveled is the one that seemed most designed to pull Mayweather off the couch (or wherever) and back into boxing. It was a criticism of his manhood.
De La Hoya leveled an accusation that has been made before about Mayweather but it is one thing when its coming from some Internet hack and quite another from a Hall of Fame boxer and your peer.
“You were afraid,” De La Hoya wrote. “Afraid of taking chances. Afraid of risk. A perfect example is your greatest ‘triumph,’ the long-awaited record-breaking fight between you and Manny Pacquiao.
“Nearly 4.5 million buys! More than $400 million in revenue! Headlines worldwide! How can that be bad for boxing? Because you lied. You promised action and entertainment and a battle for the ages, and you delivered none of the above. The problem is, that’s precisely how you want it.
“You should have fought Pacquiao five years ago, not five months ago. That, however, would have been too dangerous. Too risky. You’ve made a career out of being cautious. You won’t get in the ring unless you have an edge. Sure, you fought some big names. But they were past their prime. Hell, even when we fought in 2007 — and I barely lost a split decision — I was at the tail end of my career. Then later you took on Mexican megastar Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez, but he was too young and had to drop too much weight.”
There it is. Alvarez was “too young” before, but not now. De La Hoya implies, Alvarez is Mayweather’s equal — essentially asking him if he is man enough to face him after he’s done with what’s left of Cotto.
“I got into this business to take chances,” wrote De La Hoya, who did indeed fight every big name of his era. “I took on all comers in their prime. The evidence? I lost. Six times. . . . You took the easy way out. When you weren’t dancing around fading stars, you were beating up on outclassed opponents. A lot of your opponents were above-average fighters, but they weren’t your caliber. You’re a very talented fighter, the best defensive fighter of our generation. But what good is talent if you don’t test it?
“Muhammad Ali did. Sugar Ray Leonard did. You? Not a chance. You spent 2000 to 2010 facing forgettable opening acts like Victoriano Sosa, Phillip N’dou, DeMarcus Corley, Henry Bruseles and Sharmba Mitchell. There were guys out there — tough scary opponents like Antonio Margarito and Paul Williams — but you ran from them. . . . Maybe you’ll wind up back on ‘Dancing With the Stars.’ It’s a job that’s safe, pays well and lets you run around on stage. Something you’ve been doing for most of your career.”
The irony of De La Hoya’s criticism is it was his company, Golden Boy Promotions, that promoted 10 of Mayweather’s final 12 fights. Nearly all were one-sided victories over the kind of opponents he cites. Certainly his company wasn’t pushing Mayweather too hard to go in another direction.
To be fair, he wouldn’t have listened any way, but the point is Golden Boy helped thrust those fights on the public without complaint . . . until now. Why?
Can you spell C-a-n-e-l-o? If you can, you’ve got your answer.
Help asked in heist
For the first time in 25 years, the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, N.Y., has been the victim of burglars and is seeking help from the FBI and private collectors of boxing artifacts to get them back.
Six world championship belts were stolen, four won by Carmen Basilio and two by Tony Zale. Canastota police chief Jim Zophy has asked for assistance from the FBI’s Antiquities Bureau, which has 16 agents in charge of art and cultural property crimes.
The belts were stolen at 2:45 a.m. Nov. 5, when three display cases were broken into after entry had been gained through a broken window. IBHOF executive director Ed Brophy said he believes the belts can only be sold on the black market and has asked anyone, including collectors and memorabilia dealers, with any information to call Canastota police at 315-697-2240.
Rodriguez escapes
Worcester light heavyweight contender Edwin Rodriguez put on a show Friday night on Spike TV, but it nearly cost him his fight with Michael Seals.
Intent on living up to his nickname of “La Bomba,” Rodriguez came out throwing bombs and dropped Seals barely 30 seconds into the fight. But after Seals wobbled to his feet, Rodriguez tried to finish him off and ran into a bomb of his own barely 30 seconds later and toppled to the canvas. Suddenly, the fight was on.
Unsteady on his feet, Rodriguez tried desperately to hold on but was dropped a second time with 10 seconds left in that opening round and it looked as if he would fail in his attempt to bounce back from a lopsided loss to super middleweight champion Andre Ward two years ago.
Late in Round 2, however, Rodriguez found Seals with a booming right hand and floored him. When Round 3 began, Rodriguez bounced an unanswered string of punches off Seals’ face until the fight was stopped 24 seconds into the round when another Rodriguez right hand dropped Seals again.
“Anyone can go down in a fight, but it’s if you get back up and how you get back up that matters,” Rodriguez said. “You just have to keep on fighting. Just like in life — you have to be able to get back up. He caught me with some good shots, but in the end, I was able to finish him off.”
Seals claimed he dislocated his shoulder following the punch that first sent Rodriguez down and demanded a rematch.
Fat chance of that.
Not on the ‘Money’
Mayweather criticized The Ring magazine, which incidentally was saved by De La Hoya’s decision to buy it, for putting MMA superstar Ronda Rousey on its latest cover. Mayweather claimed it was bad for boxing to have someone from another sport on its cover. Apparently he doesn’t read Golf Magazine, which does it nearly every month. Rousey, who was in Australia to fight on pay-per-view this weekend, was asked about Mayweather’s criticism. She brushed it off, saying: “I can’t really say that I’m sad. I annoyed him and there’s nothing he can do about it.” The two have taken a number of shots at each other in recent years. . . .
Rumor has it former lightweight champion Brandon Rios weighed nearly 200 pounds when he first showed up for training camp to prepare to face WBO welterweight champion Timothy Bradley on Nov. 7. He fought like a guy who had no life left in him that night and if he had to lose over 50 pounds he probably didn’t. . . .
If Bradley is looking for a logical opponent with whom to make money, he’s got one in his former nemesis Ruslan Provodnikov. The two staged the Fight of the Year two years ago, a vicious slugfest Bradley had to get off the deck to survive. That night he showed a warrior’s spirit and so did Provodnikov, and the latter would like to do it again. If it happens, it would come with a new twist. Bradley parted ways with his lifelong trainer, Joel Diaz, and hired Teddy Atlas to prepare him for Rios. Bradley never looked better in posting a ninth-round TKO on the same night Provodnikov came back from having lost his last outing to Lucas Matthysse by knocking out unknown Jesus Alvarez Rodriguez in four rounds in Monte Carlo.
Source : http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/columnists/ron_borges/2015/11/borges_alvarez_match_aim_of_mayweatherslam
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