Originally Posted by
The Rookie Fan
I know, I know, this has been done and re-done. But it's been nearly 8 years now and people still debate it constantly with little sign of giving in. So I wanted to take another crack at this timeless debate and take a fresh look at this huge event in boxing history.
I saw the fight last night again and I saw some things that I may have noticed at the time but forgot about in the time since. Sometimes things go into the back of your mind and the details just get washed away with the passing of years.
Most of you know, if you have seen me post, who I think won. But I will do my very best to make this an objective post.
A few things I noticed that I kind of took for granted over time.
1. This fight was actually pretty damn good. I think the enormous hype that it caused made fans criticise the lack of action. This is understandable considering that at the time these were two of the biggest power punchers ever to step into a ring together and before this fight, DLH was considered a brawler doing justice to his Mexican heritage. Ignoring the huge expectations of the fight, it was very entertaining to watch even now.
2. A lot of these rounds were very close. I think there were only about four rounds that you could say were one sided. These were the 6th and 8th for DLH and the 10th and 11th for Tito.
3. Many times I said oh if DLH had not run or if Tito had put more pressure, this and that would have happend. But as I saw the fight, I really didn't see much room for improvement from either fighter. They both fought a near perfect fight. Some of you are probably looking at this post and thinking I am crazy. But what I mean is that anything that was lacking from one fighter was caused sheerly by the skill of the other. You could say that Tito should have been busier, but the fact is that Oscar's jab was simply too good and was not letting Tito set up to punch. You could say that DLH should have taken more risks and tried to hurt Tito, but the fact is that every time DLH stopped moving Tito was banging him with bombs.
Now I want to move to some common misconceptions.
1. "DLH ran all night long" This is total and utter nonesense. DLH boxed beautifully for most of the fight. He got tired at the end and stopped using the jab...hmm, this kind of sounds familiar. But he was doing a great job of hitting and moving and showing true ring generalship.
2. "DLH was landing on Tito at will" Also nonesense. The only punch that DLH was landind consistently was the jab. Tito was making DLH miss just as much as DLH was making Tito miss. With that said, both fighters still landed a decent amount of power shots.
3. "Tito hurt DLH and thats why he didn't engage at the end" I have no doubt that both Tito and DLH landed at times some hurtfull shots that would put most of todays WW on the canvas. However, at no time was either of them hurt. Both of these fighters, especially DLH, have good beards. DLH was tired. He said it himself in an interview some years after the fight. He had nothing left in the tank in the last two rounds. He kept a furious pace moving and moving and moving and this kind of boxing will take its toll.
4. "DLH clearly won the first nine rounds" This is by far the king of misconceptions. This idea I think is subject of very biased commentating on the part of Lampley and Foreman, and of replays shown between rounds throughout the fight of every punch DLH landed and hardly any replay of Tito's landed blows.
There is also something else that should be considered. If you look at the compubox numbers you will see that DLH is credited to landing 100 more punches than Tito. But you have to take into account that a good third of those pouches that DLH landed were jabs. Now I have no problem with scoring jabs, but they certainly should not have the same value as, say a left hook.
So if two guys are fighting and one of those guys lands 15 jabs, 4 right hands and 3 left hooks and the other guy lands 5 jabs, 7 left hooks and 8 right hands, who do you give the round to? It is not that easy is it. So no, hardly any of these rounds was clearly won by DLH. Please watch rounds 1 (where Tito threw more and landed more), 2 where DLH hardly threw anything other than a jab and round 4 where DLH fought in spurts and Tito did most of the work. Round nine was also extremely close and many believe Tito won this round. There are other close rounds but DLH certainly won them by most observers.
I also wanted to talk about the 11th round. This was by far the most one sided round of the entire fight. I might be wrong on the numbers but I believe DLH landed somewhere around 4 or 5 punches to Tito's close to 30. One could make a case that this was a 10 - 8 round. Of course hardly anyone uses this practice unless someone is noticeably hurt and near a knockout. But if someone told me they scored it a 10 - 8 round, I for won would not argue.
In conclusion, although I had Tito winning by one round, I strongly believe that this fight should have been scored a draw and a rematch should have been made immediately. Nither fighter should have been punished for this performance with a loss. Both did an excellent job, showed true boxing skill and gave us a great fight of two young elite fighters in the top of their game.
So this is my little tribute to IMHO the two best welterweights of the era and the night they put all on the line like few fighters do against the toughest and biggest challenge either of them had at the time.
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Re: Fresh look at Trinidad vs de la Hoya
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you for given such an unbiased account of the fight.
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