Pacquiao proves he's the best in the worldby Mark Kriegel
LAS VEGAS - As it ended, with Oscar De La Hoya rising from his stool to congratulate the man who had beaten him so badly, he didn't look like the Golden Boy.
I never thought I'd see De La Hoya like that. It's not that he wasn't pretty anymore. It's that he looked like they all do, eventually. After all these years, I had begun to suspect that De La Hoya might be exempt from the rules. But there he was: just another fighter, beaten and old, with that dented crease across his nose and his left eye all but closed.
The fight had been billed as "The Dream Match." If so, it was a dream imagined by few but Manny Pacquiao and his trainer, Freddie Roach.
"Freddie," said Oscar, who had unceremoniously fired the trainer after his loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. "You're right. I don't' have it anymore."
For months now, you have heard that a good big man beats a good little man. But what of a great little man?
What of Manny Pacquiao?
He made his debut at 106 pounds, and has spent most of this decade under 130. He fought but once, last June, at 135 pounds. Now it will be said that his accomplishment — dismantling the 35-year-old De La Hoya — will accord him consideration in boxing history with the great Henry Armstrong, who simultaneously held the titles in three weight classes in the late '30s.
I don't know from Henry Armstrong. But I now count myself lucky to have seen Pacquiao — his bravery and skill in full measure — and stupid not to have listened to his trainer.
"We're going to knock him out in nine," Roach told me back in October.
If I should've listened, I'm not the only one. The late money came in De La Hoya, elevating the odds in his favor from 8 to 5, to 2 to 1. And who could blame us? As it began, with the fighters coming together for the first time in the center of the ring, it looked like the mismatch that had been so widely forecast. De La Hoya was that much bigger and longer, geometry all wrong for Pacquiao. How, I wondered, would the smaller man ever solve that distance?
Of course, it wasn't a question that bothered Pacquiao. "I knew right way I could win this fight, most likely by a stoppage," he said. "I controlled the action. I was able to defend against his jab. I was able to move around."
Pacquiao was able to demonstrate not only that he's the world's best pound-for-pound fighter, but for the first time, how good he really is. In the process, he ended the idea of De La Hoya as anything but a commercial proposition.
"I trained really hard," said De La Hoya. "My style is to go forward. But he was boxing on his toes all night and waiting for me to make my mistakes. I didn't have the strength to stop him."
The pattern became apparent early, as the southpaw Pacquiao moved in and out of Oscar's range with impunity. He hit De La Hoya with right jabs and straight lefts. The bigger man seemed befuddled and returned to his corner with a cut on his nose.
In the second round, Pacquiao added right hooks and a right uppercut to the jabs and straight lefts. De La Hoya's own jab — his most formidable weapon — was rendered useless by Manny's speed.
By the fourth, Oscar's face had become puffy. By the fifth, the fight was a one-sided display of dominance. Pacquiao still looked like the smaller man, but he was no longer fighting like one. He had begun to stand and trade with Oscar, to push and punch on the ropes. Oscar tried to hold and hit, but to no avail. The sixth saw Pacquiao land an impressive left uppercut. De La Hoya's eye was almost closed now.
I scored the seventh 10-8 for Pacquiao. Now the little man looked big, and the bigger man brave. Pacquiao landed 45 punches, more than De La Hoya had ever absorbed in a single round of his career. It was a wonder that Oscar managed to score with an uppercut of his own. A bigger wonder still was how he could still be standing.
It would end after the eighth, a round shy of Roach's prediction. The enswell was of no use pressed against Oscar's eye. His trainer, Nacho Beristain, informed the referee that the fight was over.
"I had to protect him," said Beristain. "I had to stop the fight."
So it ended, the fight, and in all probability, De La Hoya's career. Some weeks ago, he had said: "I will be extremely, extremely disappointed if this fight doesn't end in a knockout. It will be a total disaster for me."
Let it be said, then: for Oscar De La Hoya, the dream match proved a nightmare.
The Golden Boy was unavailable for the post-fight press conference. "Oscar has been taken to the hospital," said a lawyer. "It's a precautionary measure."
In his place, the world's best fighter — the great little man — ducked a question asked about his presumptive match with Ricky Hatton. Then he nailed one about the man he had just beaten.
"He's still my idol," said Pacquiao.
