by Suzanne Nield
Oscar De La Hoya v Jimmi Bredahl
WBO Super-featherweight Title
The latest copy of The Ring Extra tells us that ‘De La Hoya’s first alphabet strap was the IBF version he won at 135 with his win in ‘95 over Rafael Ruelas.’
Er, no. That would be wrong. The magazine, along with much of the American media to date, is wilfully ignoring the World Boxing Organisation, under whose auspices Oscar took two consecutive titles prior to the Ruelas match – the above-mentioned and also the lightweight version, when he knocked out Mexican hero Jorge Paez in 2 rounds.
HBO television only recently deigned to regard the WBO as an official sanctioning body, calling it a paper organisation at first, and making snooty comments about its champions ‘holding some title or other’.
They wouldn’t like that much in Wales, would they? But considering that the Puerto Rican association famously advanced the ranking of a dead man (twice), you can understand why it’s taken some time to gain respectability. Now, of course, there’s no excuse for rudeness – the WBO champs include Juan Manuel Marquez, Antonio Margarito, Jermain Taylor, and Jhonny Gonzalez as well as those Welsh blokes. So get your act together, Ring magazine. The title-monster is a beast with many heads – since none of them are gorgeous, there’s no reason to smooch one and spit in another’s eye.
Oscar only had to lace on a pair of gloves for the bunting to fly and the band to strike up in LA. On that March evening in ‘94, however, the crowd was already buoyed by the action of the main card -James Toney had taken a bad cut in his battle with Tim Littles, but roared to a fourth round knockout. He was in his dressing room getting 12 stitches, the most in his career. The venue was the newly-reopened Grand Olympic Auditorium, which had seen some great boxing and other sporting events up to the 1950s, when poor attendance figures for a wrestling promotion closed it down. Oscar’s father and grandfather had both fought there, so it was an emotional evening all round.
By this time De La Hoya was 11-0 (10 by knockout). He’d been matched against opponents with winning records, and already held a quick stoppage over Floyd’s Uncle Jeff. Mayweather was at 23-2-2. The Golden Boy’s latest outing was an eventful single round against 50-fight veteran Narcisco Valenzuela, when the Mexican shocked him with a flash knockdown. The youngster kept a level head like it had happened a hundred times instead of never. He took a knee for the count of eight, calmly got to his feet, battered Valenzuela to the canvas and sneered at him. It was cool.
‘It’s great to see a young fighter looking so perfect, so unblemished, his mind uncluttered by doubt,’ soliloquised HBO’s Larry Merchant dreamily, as Oscar jogged around the ring. But we all felt the same way. The Golden Boy had arrived like a gift in a time of great need, and the boxing world’s cardiac muscles were throbbing with gratitude.
The devotional parade came bearing sacrificial lamb Jimmi Bredahl, the young Dane who had taken the belt from long-serving European champion Daniel Londas eighteen months previously, and was undefeated at 17-0 with 5 inside.
To meet him, Oscar was squeezing into a weight class he hadn’t seen since the amateurs. It was part of the ‘champion at six weights’ quest which had been in his mind all along. Well, he made it – just. Oscar’s highest title-winning poundage was when he beat Sturm for the WBO middleweight strap, but he could scarcely look us in the eye afterwards. Nature never intended the Golden One to be a middleweight, but he cheated her, and it’s Oscar and Tommy Hearns who go down in history as six-division champions.
Genaro Hernandez was also a title-holder at this point, and rumour had it that the young prospect was being steered away from so dangerous an opponent. It would have been poor management to have made that fight so early, and Oscar was candid about needing more time to develop his strength. In fact, he took Hernandez on the following year, and handed him his first loss inside 6 rounds.
…And Jimmi Bredahl has never been on the canvas, but that changes after 1 minute in the company of Oscar’s right hook. Bredahl takes his time climbing to his feet, and is looking overwhelmed in the rest of the round, but Oscar fails to capitalise well and he makes it to the corner.
The Dane isn’t going to give his belt up like a pushover, however. Opening round 2, he connects with a strong right hand to De La Hoya’s head. Oscar throws back, but then his knees buckle in a delayed reaction. Audible gasp from the crowd – but he recovers to snap Jimmi’s head sideways with a left hook, then a big right takes the defender’s head back. Another overhand right, and the follow-up barrage includes a right uppercut to put Bredahl down again. But he won’t stay down, and survives another flurry to make it to the bell.
The crowd are chanting ‘East LA! East LA!’ expecting Oscar to finish things quickly. To tell the truth, although severely outclassing Bredahl, the young Olympian looks green in the early rounds. He’s putting a lot of power into hooks that just whistle through clean air – Jimmi’s pretty nippy – he’s not cutting off the ring and he’s forgetting to go to the body. Bredahl’s southpaw stance seems to be giving him problems. By the end of the fourth, Oscar is annoyed that he can’t get rid of this guy. George Foreman, commentating, sighs, ‘Some guys you can’t knock out just ‘cos you hittin’ them in the head.’
De La Hoya continues grimly to outland Bredahl by a preposterous percentage, providing lovely sharp counters to everything Jimmi puts together. Oscar’s on his toes, but he’s not trapping his opponent, who runs far and wide across a large ring. Harold Lederman comments that Oscar is winning whether we score on clean punching, effective aggressiveness, ring generalship, defense, artistic impression or technical merit – it’s true enough that he’s winning on any criterion you could name, but let’s not gush about the ring generalship.
He’s winning on that only because Bredahl’s idea of it is to scamper away when he can, and collapse into De La Hoya’s arms when he can’t. Frustrated, Oscar shoulders him off, then gets warned for hitting on a break.
If the fight had been made just a few months later, the cinnamon Danish would have been toast in round 1. But it goes into the ninth, then the tenth. Oscar’s never been this far before – only Mike Grable survived to round 8 with him. De La Hoya gets off a flurry in the opening seconds, ending in a big right to the head through Bredahl’s guard. Through the follow-up barrage Jimmi tries to hang on, only to get a teeth-rattler on the inside. Oscar beats out a terrific tattoo, left to the sternum, right hook to the head, then a straight left that rocks the melancholy Dane to his boots. A cracking right hand nearly takes Bredahl’s head off, followed by an uppercut. He had no right to be standing up at all. The round ends, and De La Hoya’s long-time trainer Robert Alcazar bounds into the ring centre to hug Oscar like the fight’s over. And it is – the doctor says enough punishment is enough for the durable Bredahl.
De La Hoya was fighting one or two guys a month in those early days, none of them pushovers, though he made them look that way. He wasn’t being babied. (Have a look sometime at Boxrec and compare Oscar’s early opponents with those of Amir Khan, and you’ll see what I mean.) The Olympic winner had huge experience as an amateur, but was learning on the job in the pro game.
Oscar defended his new belt once, taking unbeaten Giorgio Campanella out in the third, before moving back up to lightweight to compromise his popularity with the Hispanic community by wiping out folk hero Paez in two rounds for another WBO title. Paez was at 53-6-4.
Oscar’s second-round destruction of Rafael Ruelas for the IBF lightweight title was much more satisfying. Paez had been on the slide, but Ruelas came in for his third title defence at 43-1-0 (34 kayos) to Oscar’s 17 pro bouts, having just stopped Billy Schwer on severe facial lacerations in eight rounds.
The audience was expecting fireworks – both fighters had impressive techniques but an occasional vulnerability that had seen them on the canvas in round 1. It was widely believed that if the fight went past the early rounds Ruelas, a slow starter, would take it. But De La Hoya liked a quick evening’s work. The first round saw him deliver a beautiful double one-two to the head followed by a steep left hook to the body – one of his signature punches. Ruelas was forced to work at long range against his inclinations, and had limited success, given Oscar’s outstanding defence. He made Ruelas miss several hooks to get in his own right to the head. Up close, Ruelas had a wicked uppercut which was his only really effective weapon in this fight.
In the second minute of round two, De La Hoya threw a left hook, right uppercut followed by a shattering left to floor Ruelas. When he was on his feet again, Oscar feinted with the left to land a right hook that chopped him back down. The champion pulled himself up on the ropes to beat the count, clearly shaken to the core, and endured another barrage to the head before referee Richard Steele jumped in to rescue him.
Speed, technique, and the killer instinct – there was no doubt that De La Hoya had it all. But for some, the very fact that Oscar looked more like a matinee idol than a boxer offended their sensibilities. Really, how could he look like that and be any good? That’s who Oscar was talking to when he said after the Ruelas fight, ‘For all the critics out there who doubted me, this one’s for you.’
But it would take more than that.
Next: Trophy Scalps
