Starr - A Link You Might Like To Look At......

[NuthaPug]

What I want to know is what was the basis, besides sheer imaginative speculation, for anyone reasoning that DLH was not hungry, or was rusty or was too old?

Not a thing. Not a gosh-durn thing. :P

Come on, that's not fair. Rusty - hadn't fought a fight in a year and a half. Too old - lost all three of the fights he'd fought in the last 3 years (because he didn't beat Sturm).

The dumb move was going from that to predicting that a hand-picked idiot who can't fight would have a shot at beating ODH anyway. I still think Oscar's past his prime--but I'd take a past-his-prime ODH every single time against a non-elite, undisciplined, no-defense talker like Mayorga.

Against Sturm ... yeah, it was sloppy. He was sloppy. Had he come in better prepared it would have been different.

You do seem to concede that this performance may raise some legitimate questions (chief among them the one begged by your statement, viz., "did he retain the ability to come in better prepared?"). And he didn't do anything to erase these questions by losing against B-Hop, regardless of whether that shouldn't be counted against him because he moved up in weight. And then the next fight was Mayorga.

I think it was legitimate to <u>wonder</u> about age and ring rust, but to assume ... nothing but such things could have explained a Mayorga win. And if there was significant rust or age, and Mayorga was able to slip in and pound him - then the Mayorga win was possible, even if he doesn't compare to what DLH once was. (Though "still is" ends up being the case, doesn't it?)

That's all I thought we were talking about--"wondering." Wondering how far past his prime Oscar is now. That's all I was talking about anyway. Note my explicit statement in the post you were responding to that no matter how much you wondered about this, you still shouldn't have been picking Mayorga even 1 out of 10 against ODH, because the guy can't fight (and because there's no way Oscar's THAT far past his prime yet).

So in my book you really haven't got much to stand on when you say that DLH is past his prime. Sure, he's 33, so he must be. But it doesn't look like it matters a whole lot, does it?

You'll note that I didn't mention his age. 33 is not old. Mayweather is 29. Winky is 34. Oscar's age in years was never the point. As far as whether his pre-Mayorga, uh, slump, "matters a whole lot," I think we'll have to wait until he fights someone as good as the people he was losing to before, rather than a hand-picked chump with zero defense who telegraphs all of his punches. How beating Ricardo Mayorga--who was on exactly no one's p4p list, or general list of elite fighters--suddenly proves that ODH can handle Winky or PBF (as numerous posters have said on these boards) is beyond me. But then again:

It's just too easy to throw some numbers and some faulty logic into a blender and come up with "boxing analysis."

I concede that the Sturm fight was not Oscar at his best. But it didn't really raise questions for me about Oscar's ability any more than did Lennox-Rahman. It raised questions about how he viewed his opponent and how prepared he didn't come. Lennox' performance four months later could have been replicated by Oscar against Sturm had Oscar prepared for Sturm as he had for Mayorga. Those are the things I think about that fight.

Yes, you didn't mention age per se. But you want to use the last three fights as a way to measure age. Hopkins doesn't count. Sturm was lack of preparation. Mosely was very much like the DLH-Mosely of 2000 and btw I thought Oscar took the second fight. But even if he didn't he was operating at a level of DLH at his prime.

As for my last moderately snide comment about throwing some numbers and an opinion into a blender and getting back boxing analysis - I guess I'm just as capable of that as any.