De La Hoya should follow Moore's lead
Posted Dec. 7, 2008 at 03:52pm
By William Dettloff
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In the broader sense, there was little unusual about Manny Pacquiao’s victory over a fairly aged Oscar De La Hoya on Saturday night.
Put aside Pacquiao’s remarkable ability to perform so well at weights much higher than one should logically expect, and put aside once and forever the nonsense about good bigger fighters always besting smaller, better ones.
The dance the two did – younger, fresher fighter brutally unseating older, slower one – is as old as nature and the sport itself. Better prizefighters than De La Hoya have suffered the same fate and made a hell of a lot less money in the process.
Both we and De La Hoya should view this grisly changing of the guard as a kind of badge of honor, considering all the icons whose careers ended in precisely the same way.
The great Archie Moore, who died 10 years ago Dec. 9, was stopped by upstart Cassius Clay in 1962 in Moore’s next-to-last fight.
The Old Mongoose, whose birth date has always been in question, was around 50 years old at the time; considerably older than De La Hoya but certainly no less accomplished.
In case you’ve forgotten his credentials, Moore is one of the giants of this sport: the game’s all-time knockout leader; the world light heavyweight champion from 1952-62; and, according to THE RING, the second best light heavyweight ever (behind Ezzard Charles).
The Ring also named Moore the fourth greatest puncher in the sport’s history and the 14th greatest fighter of the past 80 years. His career spanned four decades.
Halls of Fame are built with guys like him in mind.
But what lasts, for Moore and all of us, is what we leave behind. And not in trophies, medals and bank accounts. But in the lives we touch.
“I wouldn’t be where I am today if not for Archie Moore,” the trainer Tommy Brooks told me recently.
As a 14-year-old aspiring boxer, Brooks joined Moore’s “Any Boy Can (ABC) Club” in San Diego, Calif., in the mid-1960s.
Brooks said that on a given night you could walk into the gym run by Moore and his assistant, Lou Lake, and find 30 kids in there. And once Brooks walked through those doors, he was hooked.
“That was forever. I was part of the family,” he said, laughing.
It wasn’t only boxing that Moore taught in the gym. In fact, kids weren’t required to box to be part of the club. But they all learned the same lessons.
“You got an education in life,” he said. “To be respectful of other people and other people’s property; to get respect you have to give respect; and you could be anything you wanted to be in your life, but you have to make a contribution to life by being a good citizen.”
Brooks said Moore taught all of them to be the best they could be in life, that it didn’t matter what their job was as long as they did it as well as they could.
“It didn’t matter if you were a dishwasher or a street sweeper,” he said. “You should be the best dishwasher or street sweeper you could be.”
As a trainer, Brooks said, Moore was difficult to work with, frequently speaking in riddles and responding harshly when questioned about his methods. (Indeed, Moore trained Ali for a period, but Ali, ever the rebel, bristled under Moore’s authoritarian rule and wound up in Miami under Angelo Dundee).
“But everything he told me was right,” Brooks said. “I see that now. I see it every day.”
Moore’s career record of 194-26-8 (141) is less important today than the lessons he imparted outside the ring, which have lives now of their own.
De La Hoya, his better fighting days gone now and better left alone for good, leaves a grand boxing legacy of his own. Because of what he was able to do in a prize ring, he has the means, the touch and the reach to do a lot of good.
Following Moore’s example would be a good place to start.
Some random observations from last week:
It was hard to tell if De La Hoya’s impotence Saturday night was due entirely to Pacquiao’s great speed and execution or to some degree also to De La Hoya’s decision to come in so light. There was a point late in the fight when I flashed back to Larry Holmes pummeling Ali, who also was fooled into thinking that getting as thin as possible would compensate for lost youth, speed, and vigor. ...
Most disturbing visual of the night: Freddie Roach, in the center of the picture, trembling from his Parkinson’s while referee Tony Weeks went over the rules in De La Hoya’s dressing room. Freddie looked an awful lot like Ali. ...
Jim Lampley, Larry Merchant and Emanuel Steward earned their paychecks when the three televised undercard mismatches lasted a combined four rounds. (Nice matchmaking.) Thank goodness Steward was there instead of Lennox Lewis, who runs out of interesting things to say right around the time his microphone is turned on…
ESPN’s Teddy Atlas spent the week telling anyone who would listen that De La Hoya “screws up all his big fights.” Huh? De La Hoya’s won more big fights than Atlas has temper tantrums. …
Pacquiao-Ricky Hatton will look like someone throwing an oversized melon into a wood chipper. …
Longtime readers know I have nothing against the use of anabolic steroids in general, and I’m as fond of Shane Mosley as anyone. Nevertheless, where’s all the outrage at the revelation that Mosley injected himself with anabolic steroids before his rematch with De La Hoya? Either way, I look forward to Sugar Shane’s attorney-authored mea culpa. The fallout, by the way, will be negligible. A nice smile and friends in high places take you a long way in life…
Evander Holyfield has a better chance against Nicolay Valuev than he did against Sultan Ibragimov. Ibragimov can move. I’ve seen rock formations that are more mobile than the giant Russian.
You’ve got to hand it to Top Rank’s Bob Arum. When one of Kelly Pavlik’s recent fights didn’t draw as well as he’d hoped, it was the economy’s fault. Now, other recent disappointments are the fault of “moronic” boxing writers.
In Nigel Collins’ prefight dispatch from Las Vegas, which appears elsewhere on this site, he quotes Arum as saying that because of what some scribes wrote about Miguel Cotto after Cotto’s loss to Antonio Margarito, “I can’t get (Cotto) on regular TV, so I have to put him on pay-per-view.”
According to Arum, we all should “take some time and read what boxing writers were writing back in the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s. These were writers who knew what they were writing about.”
As one the of the top promoters of the last 30 years, Arum in no small way helped create the mess in which the sport currently finds itself. He is one of its authors. To point the finger at boxing writers (who with a few exceptions I concede are a suspect bunch) is preposterous. Shame on him.
William Dettloff can be reached at dettloff@ptd.net
Put aside Pacquiao’s remarkable ability to perform so well at weights much higher than one should logically expect, and put aside once and forever the nonsense about good bigger fighters always besting smaller, better ones.
The dance the two did – younger, fresher fighter brutally unseating older, slower one – is as old as nature and the sport itself. Better prizefighters than De La Hoya have suffered the same fate and made a hell of a lot less money in the process.
Both we and De La Hoya should view this grisly changing of the guard as a kind of badge of honor, considering all the icons whose careers ended in precisely the same way.
The great Archie Moore, who died 10 years ago Dec. 9, was stopped by upstart Cassius Clay in 1962 in Moore’s next-to-last fight.
The Old Mongoose, whose birth date has always been in question, was around 50 years old at the time; considerably older than De La Hoya but certainly no less accomplished.
In case you’ve forgotten his credentials, Moore is one of the giants of this sport: the game’s all-time knockout leader; the world light heavyweight champion from 1952-62; and, according to THE RING, the second best light heavyweight ever (behind Ezzard Charles).
The Ring also named Moore the fourth greatest puncher in the sport’s history and the 14th greatest fighter of the past 80 years. His career spanned four decades.
Halls of Fame are built with guys like him in mind.
But what lasts, for Moore and all of us, is what we leave behind. And not in trophies, medals and bank accounts. But in the lives we touch.
“I wouldn’t be where I am today if not for Archie Moore,” the trainer Tommy Brooks told me recently.
As a 14-year-old aspiring boxer, Brooks joined Moore’s “Any Boy Can (ABC) Club” in San Diego, Calif., in the mid-1960s.
Brooks said that on a given night you could walk into the gym run by Moore and his assistant, Lou Lake, and find 30 kids in there. And once Brooks walked through those doors, he was hooked.
“That was forever. I was part of the family,” he said, laughing.
It wasn’t only boxing that Moore taught in the gym. In fact, kids weren’t required to box to be part of the club. But they all learned the same lessons.
“You got an education in life,” he said. “To be respectful of other people and other people’s property; to get respect you have to give respect; and you could be anything you wanted to be in your life, but you have to make a contribution to life by being a good citizen.”
Brooks said Moore taught all of them to be the best they could be in life, that it didn’t matter what their job was as long as they did it as well as they could.
“It didn’t matter if you were a dishwasher or a street sweeper,” he said. “You should be the best dishwasher or street sweeper you could be.”
As a trainer, Brooks said, Moore was difficult to work with, frequently speaking in riddles and responding harshly when questioned about his methods. (Indeed, Moore trained Ali for a period, but Ali, ever the rebel, bristled under Moore’s authoritarian rule and wound up in Miami under Angelo Dundee).
“But everything he told me was right,” Brooks said. “I see that now. I see it every day.”
Moore’s career record of 194-26-8 (141) is less important today than the lessons he imparted outside the ring, which have lives now of their own.
De La Hoya, his better fighting days gone now and better left alone for good, leaves a grand boxing legacy of his own. Because of what he was able to do in a prize ring, he has the means, the touch and the reach to do a lot of good.
Following Moore’s example would be a good place to start.
Some random observations from last week:
It was hard to tell if De La Hoya’s impotence Saturday night was due entirely to Pacquiao’s great speed and execution or to some degree also to De La Hoya’s decision to come in so light. There was a point late in the fight when I flashed back to Larry Holmes pummeling Ali, who also was fooled into thinking that getting as thin as possible would compensate for lost youth, speed, and vigor. ...
Most disturbing visual of the night: Freddie Roach, in the center of the picture, trembling from his Parkinson’s while referee Tony Weeks went over the rules in De La Hoya’s dressing room. Freddie looked an awful lot like Ali. ...
Jim Lampley, Larry Merchant and Emanuel Steward earned their paychecks when the three televised undercard mismatches lasted a combined four rounds. (Nice matchmaking.) Thank goodness Steward was there instead of Lennox Lewis, who runs out of interesting things to say right around the time his microphone is turned on…
ESPN’s Teddy Atlas spent the week telling anyone who would listen that De La Hoya “screws up all his big fights.” Huh? De La Hoya’s won more big fights than Atlas has temper tantrums. …
Pacquiao-Ricky Hatton will look like someone throwing an oversized melon into a wood chipper. …
Longtime readers know I have nothing against the use of anabolic steroids in general, and I’m as fond of Shane Mosley as anyone. Nevertheless, where’s all the outrage at the revelation that Mosley injected himself with anabolic steroids before his rematch with De La Hoya? Either way, I look forward to Sugar Shane’s attorney-authored mea culpa. The fallout, by the way, will be negligible. A nice smile and friends in high places take you a long way in life…
Evander Holyfield has a better chance against Nicolay Valuev than he did against Sultan Ibragimov. Ibragimov can move. I’ve seen rock formations that are more mobile than the giant Russian.
You’ve got to hand it to Top Rank’s Bob Arum. When one of Kelly Pavlik’s recent fights didn’t draw as well as he’d hoped, it was the economy’s fault. Now, other recent disappointments are the fault of “moronic” boxing writers.
In Nigel Collins’ prefight dispatch from Las Vegas, which appears elsewhere on this site, he quotes Arum as saying that because of what some scribes wrote about Miguel Cotto after Cotto’s loss to Antonio Margarito, “I can’t get (Cotto) on regular TV, so I have to put him on pay-per-view.”
According to Arum, we all should “take some time and read what boxing writers were writing back in the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s. These were writers who knew what they were writing about.”
As one the of the top promoters of the last 30 years, Arum in no small way helped create the mess in which the sport currently finds itself. He is one of its authors. To point the finger at boxing writers (who with a few exceptions I concede are a suspect bunch) is preposterous. Shame on him.
William Dettloff can be reached at dettloff@ptd.net
