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Fox Sports: "Zach Arnold's Fight Opinion site is one of the best spots on the Web for thought-provoking MMA pieces."

« | Home | »

Does anyone care about a Mayweather/De La Hoya re-match?

By Zach Arnold | January 13, 2008

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I was reading the boxing page and saw the BBC headline stating that Joe Calzaghe vs. Bernard Hopkins is supposedly finalized. April in Las Vegas, apparently. Plus, discussion of De La Hoya vs. Mayweather re-matching.

The whole story behind the canceled WCO event in San Diego over the weekend.

An interview with Frankie Edgar.

Interested in Frank Shamrock vs. Cung Le on March 29th?

Breaking down a potential match between Thiago Silva and Rashad Evans.

Steve Sievert asks the same question that we did on this week’s edition of Fight Opinion Radio – where’s the buzz for UFC 80?

Talk about burying a lede:

Couture, who had broken his left forearm again during the week, said that if the Fedor fight doesn’t happen ā€¦ well, just wait to read the story later in the week. ā€¦

Pat Miletich is interested in a big-money fight if anyone wants to promote him in it.

Jenna Jameson is retiring from porn and Tito Ortiz gets his name mentioned (again) in various press outlets.

Topics: Boxing, Media, MMA, StrikeForce, UFC, Zach Arnold | 21 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

21 Responses to “Does anyone care about a Mayweather/De La Hoya re-match?”

  1. 45 Huddle says:

    1. Mayweather/ODLH 2: Sparring 4 Real…. interests me about as much a Liddell/Silva 2, Liddell/Jardine 2, or Fedor/HMC 2. Which means not at all.

    2. This is a horrible fight for Cung Le. Yes, he has a chance to win, but the people around him should be fired for signing this fight. Shamrock isn’t Top 10 right now, but he is good enough that he is like 5 steps up in competition from anything Cung Le has been tested against so far in MMA. It is obvious to me that Strikeforce is throwing the kitchen sink at this March card (along w/ Melendez/Thomson). There attendance in the San Jose location has been down lately. They are already looking for new markets. After the Shamrock/Le fight, I don’t see anything that will bring in the fans to San Jose for another supercard for a while.

    3. Thiago Silva vs. Rashad Evans is a good fight. Silva is the better striker and submission guy. Evans is the better wrestler. Plus, Rashad has suspect cardio, meaning that Silva could KO him late in the fight.

    4. I don’t understand the lack of buzz for UFC 80 either. I am very pumped for this card. Much more so then UFC 81. Typically cards with a lot of Heavyweight fights (UFC 81) turn out to be horrible, and it is the lightweights who continue to steal the show. I think Stevenson/Penn could be an outstanding fight. Gouveia/Lambert is solid. So is Gonzaga/Werdum 2. And Tyson Griffin is always exciting. And while Lesnar is a big sell, on a pure MMA basis… This is the PPV for me.

    5. I understand some of the comments going around about the UFC putting 2 PPV’s within 2 weeks of each other. To me, this isn’t a big deal. I buy one UFC PPV per month. While the PPV’s are close in date, it is still 1 per month on my cable bill. The bigger worry is that the UFC is planning a March 1st card in Ohio, and then a March 8th card in Europe. If that March 8th card is on PPV, then there is legit beef no matter how anybody views it. Even I would complain at that point.

  2. Mr. Roadblock says:

    I’d like to see DLH/Mayweather II. But I would like to see Cotto/Mayweather first. DLH/Mayweather was a split decision and I had Oscar winning on my scorecard.

    Oscar was giving Floyd fits through the first six rounds keeping Pretty Boy at bay with his jab then inexplicably went away from the jab. I’d like to see him make adjustments to that for the rematch. Also I feel Floyd will be looking to finish Oscar this time and we’ll see a lot more action.

  3. karat3 says:

    DLH will never beat MW, he has been fighting in bursts for years now and regardless of what the promo’s say he will fade in the 2nd part of the fight. The man is simply getting old (not that he would beat MW in his prime either). How you could have DLH winning the first fight is beyond me.

  4. liger05 says:

    I would like to see Oscar fight cotto and if he wins then fight PBF again.

  5. Jeremy (not that Jeremy) says:

    Broken again. I know it was well downplayed that he broke that arm in the fight with Napao. He hasn’t been fighting, and I would have thought that he would have been under some supervision to permit it to heal enough to prevent refracture.

    Odd.

  6. 45 Huddle says:

    Old people’s bones get more brittle….

  7. Ben says:

    Re: 45 Huddle

    Oh snap! Literally.

  8. Jeremy (not that Jeremy) says:

    Steroid use also is a contributing factor in brittle bone disease.

    I’m just saying.

  9. Zach Arnold says:

    Steroid use also is a contributing factor in brittle bone disease.

    Iā€™m just saying.

    So is a lack of calcium. šŸ™‚

  10. Ultimo_Santa says:

    I do not like boxing. Never have. But the insane, 24/7 hype for Oscar/Floyd was driving me insane, so I caught the replay of the fight on free TV to see what the BFD was.

    I was bored out of my mind, and so was the crowd. Floyd got the gift decision from the judges, and spent the entire fight backpedaling while doing minimal damage.

    This was about as exciting as Sylvia/Monson. I almost wish Big John McCarthy was refereeing, and grabbed Floyd by the wrist and shouted “This is a fucking fight!”

  11. ilostmydog says:

    Ultimo_Santa, you really didn’t have to say you didn’t like boxing. Saying that you thought Floyd ‘got the gift decision’ from the judges tells us all that you don’t really follow the sport. The only ‘gift’ in that fight was one judge scoring the fight in favor of DLH.

  12. Ultimo_Santa says:

    ilostmydog, that’s fair enough. I’m not really qualified to judge a boxing match.

    But judging the excitement, it was lame.

    So no, I would not like to see a rematch. Mayweather vs. Hatton, on the other hand, was pretty entertaining. But since Floyd ‘retires’ after every single fight, who knows if we’ll see a rematch of that one.

  13. Ultimo_Santa says:

    Huddle 45: A horrible fight for Cung Le? He’ll be tested against a real fighter, give the fans an anticipated fight, and make a good payday.

    Where is the horrible?

    And who fucking cares if Shamrock is ‘Top 10’? Being ‘Top 10’ doesn’t make a good fight – Roger Huerta was having very entertaining fights long before Kevin ‘Huddle 45’ Iole was dubbing him ‘Top 10’ in his royal ranking system.

  14. cyphron says:

    I agree with Ultimo.

    I’m pumped for the Shamrock/Cung Le fight. Shamrock has suspect cardio as evidenced from his last fight with Baroni. Le didn’t look so hot either in his recent fight.

    Shamrock is living on his dominance during the MMA dark ages. Beating Baroni doesn’t mean much nowadays. Le has been spectacular while beating meat puppets. This is going to be a good fight as a barometer on how far Le has progressed. No more MMA math from the arm chair fighters. I believe Le is better than many predict and Shamrock isn’t as good as he used to be.

  15. Jim Allcorn says:

    Even as a lifelong diehard boxing fan, a Floyd – Oscar rematch has little appeal to me. That match had it’s day & we all saw that Mayweather had JUST enough in his repretoir to edge out the bigger, harder hitting, but semi-retired Delahoya in a not so exciting contest.
    Plenty of people paid their $55 to see it already, so why try to force a repeat down their throats? If this match is made, I’ll lose some respect for both men.
    IMOm the only thing that would make a rematch appealing is if Delahoya had come off of the loss & re-dedicated himself to living the life of a full time fighter again. And actually fought a couple of times in the interim to prepare himself for another run at Mayweather. But, obviously that didn’t happen.
    So, all we’d get out of Mayweather – Delahoya II is another ego-driven, limelight grabbing huge promotion between a dominant fighter in against yet another handpicked opponent in Oscar who’s a year older & once again coming off of another year long layoff.
    I just can’t buy that as a real fight. To me, it’s a glorified 12 round exhibition match.

    The only fight that matters as far as Floyd is concerned is a showdown with Cotto. Any other contest that mayweather engages in other than a Cotto fight is one of deliberate avoidance IMO.

  16. Fluyid says:

    Well said, Jim Allcorn.

  17. JThue says:

    “2. This is a horrible fight for Cung Le. Yes, he has a chance to win, but the people around him should be fired for signing this fight.”

    – I don’t really agree with this. The goal since Strikeforce started has been a Le-Shamrock fight, and the issue has been to build it up as much as possible without killing it. Yes it’s a big step up for Le, but matching him against someone a half step up first would be very risky. It’s not like he’s looked completely indestructable in his last fights, so this is the time to do it. If Le is gonna lose his next fight, the best for him and everyone else involved is for it to be against Shamrock. If they hold it off, they’re risking the UFC curse of ruining a huge fight(personally I think they’ve already taken one or two risks with Le), and this fght being as big as possible without taking unneccesary risks to make it even bigger is in the best interest of Le.

  18. Dave2 says:

    You may be right. It seems cruel to feed Cung Le to Frank Shamrock so soon but what if Cung Le gets to a lesser name opponent on his sixth or seventh build up match?

    As for Frank Shamrock’s actual ability, you can’t say that he doesn’t have talent when he beat Phil Baroni. Baroni is not a top fighter but he’s not a scrub either. Baroni went 3-5 in the UFC but 2 of his losses went to Matt Lindland and another pair to Evan Tanner. He also went 4-2 in PRIDE. Baroni is a solid “gatekeeper” for middleweight. A guy who could never win a championship but beating him puts you on a certain level. I think Frank Shamrock beating Baroni shows that Shamrock is good enough as a mid-level UFC/PRIDE fighter. Unless you would consider his win over Baroni to just be a fluke.

    Shamrock is a shell of his former self compared to his dominant reign at 200 but he still has the skills to hang. Shamrock just doesn’t have the desire to face top competition. He’s happy collecting $200,000 paycheques from Strikeforce to fight in his hometown under a setting where there is less pressure on him. There’s no way Frank would ever see that money in the UFC so I can’t blame him. I enjoy watching Frank Shamrock regardless. His fights coming up, even if they aren’t as competitive as his fight with Ortiz over 8 years ago, are still compelling.

    That’s why I don’t understand all the Fedor hate. If Fedor, who already cemented a legacy/legendary status, wants to ride out fighting lesser competition outside the UFC (aside from Barnett, though Rizzo and Monson aren’t slouches either) making seven figures a fight to pad his pension, why not? Promoters make decisions based on financial self-interests so why not fighters? As Zach said, it’s always the pimps (promoters) that get off the hook while the prostitutes(fighters) get yelled at.

  19. Zack says:

    Is Zach suggesting that Couture should look into Calcium Replacement Therapy?

  20. Chuck says:

    Jim Allcorn,

    What about Floyd vs. Paul Williams? Antonio Margarito? I agree that Floyd vs. Cotto is THE fight to make, but those other opponents would be good fights too.

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