Hand it to De La Hoya

Dean Juipe

Thursday, Aug. 28, 2003 | 9:35 a.m.

Pressed at length about his sore left hand, Oscar De La Hoya said Wednesday that he feels fine and that it will not be a factor in his Sept. 13 fight with Shane Mosley at the MGM Grand.

De La Hoya, who has had an operation on his left wrist, experienced pain in the hand two weeks ago at his training camp in Big Bear, Calif., and took himself out of action for three days. But he has since had the hand examined and has begun sparring again.

"Truthfully, it did bother me for a while," De La Hoya said during a conference call. "I felt a little twinge and I stopped everything. I didn't want to risk it.

"I kind of panicked a bit."

He said the hand has been a problem for him since a 1993 fight in Las Vegas with Troy Dorsey.

"There's no hiding the fact I have a bad hand," De La Hoya said.

"It's always going to be there (and) I just have to live with it. It's never going to be the same."

Nonetheless, he says the lingering injury -- which is not a fracture and doesn't swell -- will not cause him to alter his plan of attack for Mosley.

"It's fine, I'm ready to go," he said. "I'm back to throwing the left hand hard, with full force.

"I'm going to punch as hard as I can (through the remainder of camp) and rest the week I'm in Las Vegas.

"I'll have no worry whatsoever when I step into the ring."

De La Hoya, 30, is 36-2 with 29 knockouts in an already storied career that has seen him win major titles at 140, 147 and 154 pounds. He's the reigning World Boxing Council and World Boxing Association junior middleweight champion and a minus 240 betting favorite for the fight with Mosley.

Mosley, 31, is 38-2 with 35 KOs and is a plus-200 underdog.

Mosley defeated De La Hoya by split decision three years ago in Los Angeles.

"Shane is one of the best and I always want to fight the best," De La Hoya said. When asked why the rematch took so long to arrange, he pointed to Mosley's contractual demands, saying, "Mosley wanted a ridiculous amount of money and the fight wasn't made. He went on with his career and I went on with mine."

But Mosley is only 3-2 with a no-contest since beating De La Hoya and he hasn't won a fight in more than two years.

He took this fight for a guaranteed $4.5 million, with De La Hoya assured of $17 million.

The Grand Garden Arena is already sold out and the fight is expected to draw a healthy pay-per-view audience. There will also be 24,000 additional closed-circuit seats available at various locales in Las Vegas.

"He's a hungry fighter and he's always a hyper fighter," De La Hoya said of Mosley. "But (a fighter's) confidence level has to be down after no wins in his last three fights."

When asked if Mosley might be making a mistake in continuing to use his father, Jack, as his trainer, De La Hoya said it was a possibility.

"It could work against him," he said of Mosley not seeking outside advice. "It could be a downfall. I think we saw it when he lost to Vernon Forrest (twice) and had a no-contest with Raul Marquez."

De La Hoya believes he has improved but is skeptical of Mosley's claim that he, too, is better than ever.

"I feel he's the same," he said. "He still fights the same."

As for Mosley's belief that his speed will be the difference in the fight, De La Hoya was ready to counter.

"He keeps saying he's faster than me and that I can't handle it, but the way you neutralize speed is with timing and lots of jabs," he said, implying that he's working on just that at Big Bear.

The injury scare aside, De La Hoya says this has been a good camp -- he's using former Las Vegan Gary Jones as his chief sparring partner -- and he feels revitalized with his career winding down. He expects to retire in a calendar year, or after two or three more fights.

"I'm training as hard as I can and I'm very, very motivated," he said. "It does get tiring a bit; on weekends your body feels tired.

"But the three days off actually helped me rest my body and relax. It's a positive energy that surrounds me.

"I don't have anything to prove (but) I have to go out there and fight hard. I'm in tremendous shape and I'm ready to get that victory."