Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Columnist Dean Juipe: Inept moves encircle Oscar, Vargas

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4084.

An act of idiocy before the fight endangered Oscar De La Hoya, and an act of idiocy afterward may be endangering Fernando Vargas.

De La Hoya won his Saturday night junior middleweight fight with Vargas at Mandalay Bay by 11th-round TKO, and it was an exciting, inspired performance. Those in the sold-out arena or watching on pay-per-view or closed circuit would likely agree that this was the rare fight in which the spectator got his money's worth.

Yet De La Hoya agreed to do something so stupid Wednesday night there almost are no words for it. It was dumb on his part, and dumber yet for his trainer -- the egomaniacal Floyd Mayweather Sr. -- to even have suggested it.

Violating every accepted standard of training, particularly for a fight of this magnitude where millions and millions of dollars are at stake and dependent upon the event going off as scheduled, Mayweather invited young prospect Kofi Jantuah to spar with De La Hoya at the Top Rank Gym.

Jantuah, a native of Ghana who is 21-1 and is generally ranked among the better fighters in his 147-pound weight class, had never sparred with De La Hoya and wasn't a member of his training team. He was simply a kid who was responding to an invite.

He went seven supposedly hard rounds with De La Hoya, which seems absurd from a number of viewpoints. Did De La Hoya actually need that kind of work with the fight only three nights away? And what if he had gotten cut or hurt, thereby postponing the fight with Vargas a second time?

Promoter Bob Arum hit the roof when he heard about the sparring session, and rightfully so. He made it clear that there would be no more sparring.

Yet he would have erupted again the following night had he known that Mayweather -- in lieu of having De La Hoya spar -- was hitting his man in the face with the big padded mitts that ordinarily are only used by trainers for taking punches. Again, the chance of De La Hoya getting cut was tangible if not substantial.

Mayweather was taking an unnecessary risk and doing De La Hoya a disservice. So too are the men and women who orchestrate Vargas' career.

One by one, Kathy Duva, Rolando Arellano and Carl Moretti spoke at the post-fight press conference and each referred to Vargas in glowing terms, as could be expected. But when they were equally insistent that Vargas could and would recover and fight many more times in his career, they did so without seriously weighing the impact on the fighter's long-term health and viability.

Vargas has now lost consecutive high-profile fights and been down six times in the process. He's getting hurt in the ring and anyone who thinks it won't be noticeable when he's 60, or 30 or maybe even next year, simply hasn't been around boxing.

Vargas may be a tough guy who likes to fight, but the time has come to seriously consider retiring. He made a minimum of $6 million this weekend and has had several other good paydays in his career, which means money should not be a consideration or an issue.

But it is for those who rely on him to live a life of luxury and ease, and they're seemingly oblivious to everything else. They need him, and, quite frankly, they're using him.

It's easy to believe they don't have his best interests at heart.

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