Oscar/Floyd - The AC Edition

I just don’t trust him.

Believe me, I want to, but I just can’t.

Like a girl who’s been spurned by her boyfriend one too many times, I’m just not going to put my faith in Oscar De La Hoya. Though it isn’t going to be easy. You see, De La Hoya-Mayweather has the potential for my favorite sports storyline: The aging veteran turning in one more legendary showing. Jimmy Connors at the ’91 Open is my third greatest tennis memory, but that’s only because it’s behind McEnroe’s semifinal runs at the Open in ’90 and Wimbledon in ‘92. I look back on the Knicks’ run to the conference finals in 2000 – with an aging and gimpy Patrick Ewing dunking on Alonzo Mourning to ice a win in Game 7 of the semis against the Heat – with as much fondness as I do the New York runs of the mid ‘90’s. Nothing excites me more than the potential of Pedro Martinez returning to Shea this summer and showing that he’s got a few bullets left. In other words, I love the old guys, the favorites-turned-underdogs, the heroes who trot themselves out for one more night of glory.

But this De La Hoya; I just don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older and wiser myself, and I’m realizing that sports just ain’t that simple, especially when, like Oscar, you’re looking at a 20 million dollar payday whether you warrior through 12 rounds or pull a Hopkins and drop with the first good body shot the Pretty Boy gets to your liver. It could be because of 24/7 – I worked on the show as a writer for HBO, and had to spend a lot of time watching playbacks of Oscar drinking capuccino and playing, as Floyd Mayweather later put it, “with his punk ass dogs.” As much as Mayweather played up his bad guy angle, Oscar took the good guy role and turned it into some sort of boxing fairy persona. In the end, after watching two hours worth of “Oscar Reality,” does anyone really think this guy can turn on a switch and show up on Saturday night with the venom he’ll need to get to Floyd?

Again, nobody would love to wake up on Sunday morning and read the following rotten lead from the AP: “In a performance that may serve as the final act of a legendary career, Oscar De La Hoya battled Floyd Mayweather, Jr. to a standstill for nine rounds, and then, with a forceful left hook, dropped Mayweather to the canvas for a 10th round knockout and a most unlikely victory last night in Las Vegas.”

But right now, I just don’t know if Oscar is planning to do that. He’s made his money. He’s brought back boxing to the back pages (or the top of the websites; whatever it is these days). I just don’t know that a third objective is in his gameplan. I don’t trust him.

Mayweather by unanimous, and sadly, boringly one-sided, decision.

AC, Aaron Cohen, as he alluded to in the above piece, was the writer for "De La Hoya/Mayweather 24-7." For that fact alone, we bow before him with a humble "we're not worthy."