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Trinidad was frustrated, chasing De La Hoya around the ring, trying in vain to start a slugging match that the Golden Boy would have no part of. "My corner said to keep attacking," Trinidad said after the fight. "I put more pressure on. I knew it was close." As the rounds went by uneventfully, Trinidad seemed to be slipping further behind. The crowd booed. They wanted action. They wanted their hero, Oscar De La Hoya, to solidify his legend, the way Sugar Ray Leonard had done back in September 1981 when his desperate flurry of punches stopped Thomas Hearns in the nick of time. But while they yearned for De La Hoya to make a big statement, he seemed intent on making a much more practical one. He wanted to beat Felix Trinidad in a boxing match.

Boxing is viewed by its many detractors as a bloody contest of brute strength. It's hardly that. Strength is important and blood does flow, but mostly, boxing is strategy. Throughout his career, Oscar De La Hoya had always managed to do just what he had to do to succeed. Saturday night, clearly, he had a plan, one that would remind people what boxing was really all about. Trinidad is a puncher, a dangerous predator who will track you down, stagger you, knock you flat. De La Hoya would deny Trinidad that opportunity with speed and superior footwork. Halfway through the fight, Trinidad was on the verge of falling too far back to win without a knockout. Although the Puerto Rican never appeared to be in any danger, round-by-round tallies showed De La Hoya landing far more punches. The judges would surely take note.

Unless, of course, the judges were taking note of something else. To the untrained eye, only one of the two men in that Vegas ring looked to be a fighter. The other looked to be training for the Boston Marathon. At times De La Hoya seemed almost to make a joke of the ongoing Sylvester-and-Tweety Bird act, dancing away from Trinidad in exaggerated fashion to the jeers of the crowd. In a fight this big, this highly anticipated, it was simply assumed that De La Hoya would want to leave his mark -- not merely to win, but to stake his claim as the heir to boxing's great mid-size champions: welterweights like Leonard and Roberto Duran, or middleweights like Sugar Ray Robinson, Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Jake La Motta.

(Judge Glen Hamada of Tacoma, Wash., scored the fight 114-114; Jerry Roth of Las Vegas scored it 115-113 and Bob Logiste of Belgium scored it 115-114 for Trinidad. The Associated Press scored it 115-113 for De La Hoya. Meanwhile, a CompuBox punch analysis credited De La Hoya with landing 263 of 648 punches, while Trinidad connected on 166 of 462.)

Perhaps De La Hoya thought that greatness lay merely in remaining undefeated, in taking on the best and proving himself the smarter and more skilled performer. If so, big mistake -- both in the short and long term. For posterity, De La Hoya ought to have remembered that great rivals make for great fighters. It's the mighty battles, the Robinson vs. La Motta-style wars, that cement a boxer's place in history. In the short term, De La Hoya needed to remember that although computers tally punches these days, rounds are still scored by human beings. And judges tend to prefer lions to gazelles.

When the decision was read -- a narrow majority win for Trinidad -- the triumphant athlete who came most readily to mind was not another boxer. It was O.J. Simpson. Not only was the verdict just as shocking, this was clearly a case of jury nullification. The judges imposed their will in spite of the facts, just as surely as in the Lennox Lewis-Evander Holyfield heavyweight championship debacle (in which the judges denied Lewis a clear victory by calling the fight a draw). This case, however, should prove far less controversial. De La Hoya got too cute for his own good. "Obviously, I thought I won the fight," he said later. "I wanted to go out there and demonstrate all my ring equipment and give him a boxing lesson. Obviously, it wasn't appreciated by everyone.''

A rematch will show if the Golden Boy learned a lesson of his own.
salon.com | Sept. 20, 1999

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