Oscar De La Hoya and Manny Pacquiao at a press conference in Los Angeles on October 7. Photograph by Chris Farina. For the moment, Oscar De La Hoya is the best-known boxer in the world who is not named Muhammad Ali. The Golden Boy’s star rose with no shortage of devastating blows endured. As Ali showed us with his opponents inside the ring and his inability to step out of it in time, boxing may be fought with muscles, but it is won through the psyche. Tomorrow night, we will see if De La Hoya’s desire to regain respect in the game he loves can match Manny Pacquiao’s drive to defeat his former hero and uplift the hopes of his native Philippines—if even just for a day. Of these two good men, I am having trouble deciding whom I prefer to see temporarily rendered unconscious.
As the anticipation for the Dream Match crescendos, odds are tightening, but predictions vary greatly. Gamblers are star-struck with each sighting at the MGM of any man wearing official De La Hoya or Pacquiao warm-up jackets who vaguely fit the profile of either fighter. As the weigh-ins, interviews, and other promotional events conclude, the two champions are reminded that there are tasks more tedious than training. The typical press conference is designed for the fighters to pretend to hate each other while their promoters pretend to like each other. De La Hoya and Pacquiao have largely eluded these antics—the fight is all that is on their minds. Asked if he feels he has to win, considering the odds against him, Pacquiao replied to HBO’s boxing commentators with a smile: “Losing sucks.”
Boxing’s nickname, “the sweet science of bruising,” was coined in Boxiana, a monthly journal about the London prizering begun in 1812. This science is an applied one, and the lab work is hazardous. The bruising is both of bodies and egos. For the past few months, I have been asking many men in this sport why they stick with it, until one evening Freddie Roach’s business associate Billy Keane captured it irrefutably: "You know, boxing is dishonorable, and people lie and cheat and steal from you when you least expect it. But when Manny Pacquiao knocked out Erik Morales in the third round—it was fucking euphoric."
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