(Props: YouTube.com/fighthub)
FightHubTV recently got in front of boxing legend Oscar De La Hoya, and asked him for his thoughts on the Rory MacDonald vs. BJ Penn fight at UFC on FOX 5, which De La Hoya was apparently live-tweeting. It seems that De La Hoya enjoys that MMA stuff once in a while, although he was a little confused by Rory’s performance:
“Well I wondering like, ‘why don’t you just go finish him?’ Because [MacDonald] looks like he has talents, he looks like he has that little ‘it’ factor…just keep on working on it, keep on working on it. You have to feel that killer instinct. Feel it! And go after it. Grab it, get it…I would love to see him use that jab to the body. If I was in there with that opponent he was fighting against, that jab to the body would have just paralyzed him. I mean, it would have. You could see it. I mean, obviously you could see things from outside, but he’s a talented fighter, my hat goes off to him.”
Dang, I kind of feel bad that Oscar referred to UFC legend BJ Penn simply as “that opponent [Rory] was fighting against,” and I’m sure it would break Penn’s heart to hear that. But honestly, I wondered the same thing during the fight. Particularly in the second round, when Penn was doubled up from body shots, with only his pride and otherworldly toughness keeping him on his feet — could MacDonald have turned it up a notch and beaten Penn to the ground? In the third round, when Rory was, ahem, “trying to mix it up [with] different distances” — what if McDonald just threw more strikes instead of showing off his totally sweet Muhammad Ali shuffle-step impression?
As De La Hoya mentioned himself, it’s easy to judge a fighter from outside the cage, and identify the things they could have done. (By the way, Oscar, if you ever want a blogging gig at CagePotato, just say the word.) Still, the fact that DLH cares enough to share his opinion is a nice change from the MMA vs. Boxing cold war that we’re usually subjected to.