De La Hoya's next foe

BY RON BORGES

BOSTON GLOBE COLUMNIST
LAS VEGAS - Ricardo Mayorga had nothing to say Saturday night but "Tio."

After months of trash talking and contentious confrontations with Oscar De La Hoya, during which Mayorga crudely insulted not only his challenger for the World Boxing Council junior middleweight title but also De La Hoya's wife and infant son, when it came time to fight at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, he couldn't. For nearly six rounds, Mayorga was turned into a punching bag by De La Hoya's superior speed and defensive skill, and he twice was knocked to the floor before referee Jay Nady stopped the bout with Mayorga being pummeled so severely, he was reaching out with one hand as if to say, "Uncle."

As had been the case for months, De La Hoya didn't listen. Instead, he landed more than a dozen unanswered punches after Mayorga got up from a second knockdown before Nady rushed in so forcefully. The new champion fell to the floor when Nady pulled him away as the old champion sagged on the ropes.

The bombastic Nicaraguan was in trouble from the bout's first minute, when De La Hoya countered a wild right with a perfectly thrown short left hook behind his own right that sent Mayorga to the canvas for the first time.

Stunned, Mayorga scrambled off the floor, but his trainer, Stacey McKinley, later claimed his fighter was never the same. In reality, he was exactly the same. The same untutored, wide-open landing strip for well-timed punches he'd been against Felix Trinidad and Cory Spinks.

Mayorga is a bully whose reputation for violent encounters far exceeds his résumé when it is closely read. In that regard, he was the perfect opponent for De La Hoya's comeback from a self-imposed 20-month layoff.

Handpicked by De La Hoya, the smartest fistic businessman since Sugar Ray Leonard, Mayorga had no idea what he was getting into. As long as De La Hoya didn't run into one of Mayorga's wide and wild punches from an odd angle, as happened in Round 3, when a short uppercut shot through De La Hoya's defense and snapped his head back, boxing's Golden Boy knew he was on safe ground.

All night he landed a stinging jab and behind it came a right he often keeps under wraps and then his trademark left hook. A natural southpaw who was converted to a conventional stance as an amateur, De La Hoya's real power is in his lead left, as Mayorga first found out in the opening minute.

At that point, Mayorga was blindly rushing in, trying to intimidate De La Hoya. But De La Hoya was unflustered, calmly waiting for his moment as he stood in front of Mayorga, as if to urge him on. When the champion attacked once too often, De La Hoya landed the hard right and then the left hook. After the knockdown, Mayorga was more wary than wild, just as De La Hoya intended.

"I felt rusty for the first minute or so, but then I started using my jab," De La Hoya (38-4, 30 KOs) said. "I was popping it and I could see it was hurting him. I was hitting him with my right hand and he felt the power. I knew if I took his heart away from the get-go, he'd have nothing."

Instead, he knocked Mayorga (28-6-1, 23 KOs) down and then countered his every move. By the time the end came, Mayorga was retreating as often as he was advancing, and when he tried to attack early in Round 6, he was dropped by the same right-left combination that sent him to the floor in the first minute.

Now the search will begin for another opponent, the perfect exclamation point to De La Hoya's nearly perfect career. Although he insisted after the fight he had not yet decided whether he would fight one last time in September, as he'd promised when his comeback began, he already knows what he will do -- and against whom.

There has been much speculation he will finish his career by facing the challenge of young Floyd Mayweather Jr., who is considered the best fighter, pound for pound, in the world. Certainly, Mayweather is no Mayorga. He is fast, agile, dangerous, and as skillful as De La Hoya. And, most of all, he is younger, hungrier, and, unlike Mayorga, a bad stylistic matchup for the 33-year-old Golden Boy.

Mayweather is also the estranged son of De La Hoya's trainer, Floyd Mayweather Sr., who shaped Mayweather before son fired father in the last of a long line of personal and professional disputes several years ago. The elder Mayweather is insisting he will not work with De La Hoya if he fights his son, and the reasons are obvious. De La Hoya said Saturday it would be "impossible" to make the fight without his trainer at his side. If both statements are true, it would seem a showdown is unlikely despite the fact it probably would produce record-breaking pay-per-view sales for a non-heavyweight fight.

"No fight after this is a guarantee," De La Hoya said. "I'll sit down with my wife and family and my team and see if it's worth fighting again. The decision I'll be making in the next few weeks I'm sure will catch a lot of people by surprise." www.doghouseboxing.com

"Maybe Tito will come out of retirement only to get KO'd by Oscar" cuz DeLaHoya seems to not want to fight without Mayweather Sr. by his side, or maybe he can talk him into training him to fight his son? Who knows!!!