Friday, Sept. 12, 2003 | 9:35 a.m.
Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4084.
It all comes down to his left hand.
Is it already hurt?
Will it give out during the fight?
Is it the reason he has talked about retirement?
Oscar De La Hoya beats Shane Mosley in their Saturday fight at the MGM, I believe, but only if his left hand survives the fight intact.
If it doesn't, if it's hurt at all, he won't have the firepower to keep Mosley off of him or the willpower to chase him down if need be.
Sounds pretty simple, right?
"It's no secret. People know I've had my left hand injured many times," De La Hoya said of an appendage that is both his greatest strength and greatest potential weakness. "Right now it's 100 percent."
But he has had surgery on his left wrist and just a month ago while training he was jolted by a twinge further up in the hand.
"I felt this pinch and I stopped everything," De La Hoya said.
Beyond the medical attention he immediately sought and received, De La Hoya did something unusual for a fighter: He admitted he was hurt.
It was a decision that raised eyebrows and a couple of fears, one on the MGM's end that De La Hoya would pull out of the fight and one, offered earlier here, that he was alerting his supporters that he may be near the end of his career. He has since said he would retire if he loses another fight.
The belief may not be widely shared but it's out there nonetheless: De La Hoya might very well know the hand is going to break down in a fight -- either in this one or in one yet to come -- but he accepts his condition and realizes it isn't going to get any better. He may know that at any given minute against Mosley or some future opponent, the hand will snap and his career will be over.
He'll take every precaution to protect the hand and it will be wrapped with the greatest expertise, and, perhaps, it may not be a problem. But rest assured he won't baby it or hold back from throwing it, because the left-handed De La Hoya has a great reliance on that left hand.
He says he won't fight Mosley the same way he did three years ago in Los Angeles, when, bothered by an illness, he forced the action and tried to end it early. "It was stupid," he said. "I only had one game plan."
But if he feels the left hand might fail him, one reasonable option is to come out and go after Mosley right away in something of a "make or break" approach. In that respect, De La Hoya wouldn't be the first fighter to mislead his opponent into thinking he was going to use one strategy when he clearly favored another.
Tactically, if the fight settles into a pace that is likely to be extended the full 12 rounds, neither De La Hoya nor Mosley will surprise the other.
"It won't be anything I haven't seen," Mosley said of what he's looking for from De La Hoya. "Him either with me."
De La Hoya turns his body more than he once did to absorb punches on his shoulders and protect his face and to launch a counterattack, and he has a proven ability to take a punch at this weight.
Mosley does not.
This is only his second fight at 154 pounds and the first one was a three-round "no contest" with Raul Marquez that was prematurely stopped by cuts.
Conversely, De La Hoya has withstood big punches from a big puncher (Fernando Vargas) as a junior middleweight and has never shied away from contact. He'll readily take a punch to give one, and he hits hard enough to make the sacrifice worthwhile.
There's also a motivation factor that tilts to De La Hoya's favor. He wants to avenge his earlier loss to Mosley and wants to demonstrate that he has improved as a fighter.
Mosley's greatest motivation is simply to win a fight for the first time in 784 days and prove he's not completely shot.
The complexities and a bit of luck have combined to make this a lucrative event for everyone involved.
"One of the biggest reasons this fight is doing so well is that people are starved for a big fight," promoter Bob Arum said. "It seems like we haven't had one for a while."
De La Hoya gets a minimum of $17 million and a percentage of the profits after the pay-per-view buys exceed 700,000. Mosley gets a $4.5 million guarantee, plus an extra $500,000 if he wins and a lesser percentage of the profits after that 700,000 figure kicks in.
Arum estimates De La Hoya could make as much as $25 million, which would top the $23 million he got for his record fight with Felix Trinidad.
If it's a last hurrah for De La Hoya, he plans to go out on his shield.
"I'm here to fight, that's for sure," he said. "I'll fight 12 hard rounds if I have to."
But only, of course, if his left hand lets him.
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