Columnist Dean Juipe: De La Hoya likely loses before long

Dean Juipe

Monday, May 24, 1999 | 10:59 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

Every fighter starts out undefeated but virtually none finishes his career with a perfect record.

The last big-name fighter to go out unscathed was heavyweight Rocky Marciano, who said "I feel I've got two or three good fights left in me" when he retired with a 49-0 record in 1956.

Today there are 47 professional boxers ranked by either the Sun or Boxing Digest among the top 15 in their weight class who retain perfect records. A 48th, heavyweight Brian Nielsen of Denmark, is not ranked, yet has matched Marciano's 49-0 record by facing extremely inept opposition.

Of those 48, perhaps as many as eight can be classified as fighters with the potential to remain unbeaten: cruiserweight Juan Carlos Gomez (28-0); junior middleweight Fernando Vargas (16-0); welterweights Oscar De La Hoya (31-0) and Felix Trinidad (34-0); lightweight Shane Mosley (32-0); junior lightweight Floyd Mayweather (21-0); featherweight Naseem Hamed (32-0); and super bantamweight Erik Morales (33-0).

De La Hoya, of course, fought Saturday and he's fighting Trinidad Sept. 18, so that will eliminate one of them. Based on his still-tentative showing while defeating Oba Carr with an 11th-round knockout, De La Hoya probably loses sometime before he retires to a life in Hollywood.

As for the others, Mayweather and Morales look the most formidable, although local oddsmaker Herbie Lambeck commented at Saturday's fights at Mandalay Bay that he gives Mosley the best chance of staying undefeated.

Lambeck's opinion has to be respected, even if Mosley has yet to really exhibit the superstar abilities it takes to keep a perfect record intact. He's also moving up in weight in pursuit of better quality opponents.

Missing from this list of perfect-record champions are two well-known fighters, Roy Jones and Ricardo Lopez. Easy as it is to forget, Jones actually has a loss as a result of a disqualification against Montell Griffin, and Lopez was held to a draw last year with fellow champion Rosendro Alvarez.

As a measure of how difficult perfection is to retain over a long period of time, consider the fact that a man still regarded by some as the sport's greatest pound-for-pound champion, Sugar Ray Robinson, finished his career with a record of 171-19-6.

To win every fight takes a rare combination of strength and finesse. Luck also comes into play, as does the talent level of the other guys in your division. Gomez, for example, may never lose a cruiserweight fight but many fans of the sport would say "so what?"

The real pressure falls on the other seven, which will be reduced to six after De La Hoya and Trinidad tangle in what HBO senior vice president Lou DiBella calls the "classic fight of this generation." That fight is on the verge of being solidified and, when it comes off, De La Hoya will have to become more aggressive -- and not just talk about it, as he continually does -- if he's going to walk away with a victory.

He really wasn't all that impressive in dispatching Carr.

Even if he handles Trinidad, in all probability he will lose a fight when he moves up a division to 154. Vargas and another undefeated champion, David Reid, await.

Perhaps the best bet to stay undefeated is Mayweather, yet the fans aren't enamored with him or his style. Sometimes being unbeatable just isn't good enough.