{"id":335703,"date":"2025-12-26T00:23:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T00:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/335703\/"},"modified":"2025-12-26T00:23:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T00:23:06","slug":"oscar-de-la-hoya-says-28-year-old-world-champion-is-the-best-hes-ever-seen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/335703\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar De La Hoya says 28 year old world champion is the “best he’s ever seen”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oscar De La Hoya<\/a> has named a current world champion, known for his silky skills and remarkable judgement of distance, as the \u2018greatest fighter\u2019 he\u2019s ever seen.<\/p>\n

Of all the pound-for-pound stars parading this sport today, Oleksandr Usyk<\/a> and Naoya Inoue have undoubtedly cemented themselves as two of the very best.<\/p>\n

But Usyk, in particular, is now widely regarded as the world\u2019s leading boxer, especially after the recent announcement of Terence Crawford\u2019s retirement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Having become a three-time undisputed champion across two weight divisions, the Ukrainian has left himself with very little to prove, but is seemingly still eager to enhance his glittering legacy.<\/p>\n

With two victories over Tyson Fury, Anthony Joshua and Daniel Dubois, respectively, Usyk has also shown that an ambitious move to heavyweight was never beyond his capabilities.<\/p>\n

As for Inoue, the two-division undisputed king is, like Usyk, a masterful technician, but also possesses enough power to knock out any fighter in the lower weight classes.<\/p>\n

And yet, while these two are rightfully considered the flagship competitors of the sport, De La Hoya seems to believe that Shakur Stevenson<\/a>, the WBC lightweight champion, is ultimately the very best.<\/p>\n

The three-weight world champion has hardly even lost a round as a pro, triumphing over the likes of Oscar Valdez, Jamel Herring and William Zepeda in mostly one-sided fights.<\/p>\n

And now, with him gearing up to face WBO world super-lightweight champion Teofimo Lopez on January 3<\/a>1, Stevenson has been presented with an opportunity to claim his most notable win.<\/p>\n

But it was over a year ago, in fact, that De La Hoya, while speaking with Club Shay Shay<\/a>, praised the American for his \u2018beautiful style\u2019 and \u2018great technique\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Stevenson is] the greatest fighter I\u2019ve ever seen. Beautiful style, great technique, has the punching power, has the chin\u2026 but he needs the confidence to fight.<\/p>\n

\u201che has to believe in himself to put on a good show and sell [tickets]. That\u2019s the problem he\u2019s having \u2013 he\u2019s not selling seats.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar De La Hoya has named a current world champion, known for his silky skills and remarkable judgement…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-335703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}