[deadlyshaolin]

Oscar De La Hoya helped train Diego Sanchez for his fight against Josh Koscheck. See his reaction to the fight below:

from www.doghouseboxing.com

OSCAR DE LA HOYA: I did watch the fight. He performed very well. The better man that night won. That’s all.

KELLY SWANSON: Did you see any of your training through his performing last night.

OSCAR DE LA HOYA: Not really, He held back a lot. Didn’t throw the hooks like we worked on. We worked on a lot of foot work as well, which he didn’t execute, but it’s different in a cage. I personally thought he should have went for the shoot more, take him to the ground, and pound him out. There was an open arm bar that he could have went for, and there was a moment that he could have choked him out with a Rare naked choke, but it wasn’t sunk in properly. I was screaming at my television, “ Go for the omlatte Platter” (laughter)

KELLY SWANSON: The what?

OSCAR DE LA HOYA: It’s a technique where you choke out your opponent with your heel, while holding his head down. Complicated stuff, I know.

KELLY SWANSON: So, safe to say, you wern't impressed with his boxing in this fight,

OSCAR DE LA HOYA: Well, like I said, He did well, but when you train with me, and with this sport that I love dearly, I put my heart in to it, so I expect to see some sort of outcome, but when a blonde kid from San Jose beats you at my game, it doesn’t represent our sport very well. And my name is with that. But boxing and Striking are to different things, so.

A couple of things I noticed:
- I like DLH's attitude re: MMA. Seems to respect the sport.
- LOL @ "omlatte platter"
- His observation that boxing and striking are two different things is very astute. MMA striking is NOT boxing, it's NOT muay thai, it's NOT kickboxing. It's its own beast. That being said, the best MMA strikers have solid grounding in a base striking art. I don't believe in "MMA Fighting" as an art -- only as a sport.

[deadlyshaolin]

Addendum: The typed manuscript above is from a taped interview with DLH. The typos contained in his comments (e.g. "rare naked choke," "omlatte platter") could very well be the mistake of the person who typed it up, not from DLH himself. For all I know, Oscar could be a big fan of MMA and said "gogoplata" correctly.

[boxhead51]

Great interview I'm a bigger Oscar fan now.

[Tim Chan]

wonder if oscar will do some mma matches sometime.

[King Kabuki]

Not when he's making $20 million a fight in Boxing.

[Braderlei]

call me a dumbass....but i dont remember being "an open arm bar"

let alone an omoplata...which doesnt even use your heel to choke anyone out. a gogoplata uses your shin and calf of the other leg so that doesnt make sense either

does DLH know koscheck is a worlds better wrestler than deigo? although sanchez did take his back pretty quickly in the 1st round i must say

i dunno im a little dissapointed how he was talking there

[King Kabuki]

Oscar was just kidding, stop being an ass.

And Josh being a "worlds better" wrestler means dick when Diego is "worlds better" at BJJ. The ONE time they went to the ground Diego got the better of it in less than 10 seconds.

[mahalo]

koscheck isn't a real blonde.

[Teedoh74]

Oscar was not too accurate about the fight but gets my respect with his comments. I was yelling at the T.V. for Diego to let Josh take him down so he can sweep him easily tap him out.

[Jubacat]

It is nice to see a boxer have good things to say about MMA.

I also find his comment about boxing and striking in MMA being different as more proof that boxing, kickboxing, etc. is not the same as MMA striking.

(There was another thread about this subject last week)