Bernard Hopkins has a unique insight into a fantasy fight between Oscar De La Hoya and Saul ‘Canelo‘ Alvarez having fought the former and promoted the latter.
De La Hoya was, at one stage, the biggest star in the sport of boxing. The six-weight world champion won his first 33 bouts before suffering defeat. At the end of his career, he had only lost to Felix Trinidad, Shane Mosley, Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao and Hopkins.
When he turned his hand to promoter, De La Hoya’s golden boy was Canelo – a four-division champion with only two defeats in 66 contests. A bitter split has led the pair to fire shots outside of the ring, but what would happen if they stepped through the ropes prime against prime?
Speaking to FightHype, Hopkins predicted his business partner and former opponent would come out on top through sheer volume.
“Oscar by decision. He would outbox him, jab him. If you look at me and Oscar’s fight, I knew I was losing that fight and my trainer told me you gotta be the big guy. I was bigger as far as you know I’d been at middleweight just about 80% of my career. I had to go ahead and force my will on Oscar and actually get close to Oscar.
But leading up to that tenth, eleventh round, he was winning and I was getting outpointed. I would hit Oscar with one or two punches, he’d hit me with three, four, five. They didn’t hurt me but they were still adding up and I had to literally go and actually make him fight with me like Canelo would try to do.”
Canelo is currently unified super-middleweight champion with a big decision as to who he faces next. The two fighters fans would like to see in the opposite corner are David Benavidez – a man De La Hoya says the Mexican is ducking – or Terence Crawford, pound-for-pound superstar willing to jump up two weight classes for the challenge.
