Homecoming: De La Hoya vs. Forbes

'Homecoming: De La Hoya vs. Forbes' on free, cable TV

Oscar de la Hoya goes back to his old neighborhood of East LA for a boxing event to remember, as ABS-CBN Sports presents "Homecoming: De La Hoya vs. Forbes" this Sunday, May 4 over ABS-CBN Channel 2 and SKYCable’s Balls channel.

ABS-CBN and Balls’ satellite broadcasts both start at 9 a.m.

Airing via satellite from Los Angeles’ Home Depot Center’s Football Stadium, whose 30,000-man capacity marks the largest crowd of live spectators for an Oscar De La Hoya fight since 1998, this massive sports event will pit The Golden Boy against fighter Steve Forbes, the first runner-up from the second season of the reality series The Contender. The winner of this bout will fill the challenger slot versus current WBC welterweight champ Floyd Mayweather, Jr in September.

With 20-1 odds for a De La Hoya victory for this match, boxing fans are curious to see if the fight, produced by De La Hoya’s Golden Boy promotions, was angled to provide De La Hoya with a guaranteed victory over underdog Forbes. For one thing, De La Hoya is 5’10, with a 73” wingspan.

Forbes is 5’7”, and his reach is 5” shorter. De La Hoya will also have home-court advantage -- they are fighting in his hometown, and many spectators can probably be counted on to cheer for the popular hometown boy.

Similarly, De La Hoya, having been held title belts since he began his professional career in 1992, has experience fighting more aggressive, and, theoretically, higher-caliber power-punchers than his reality-show challenger.

But, as Forbes put it in one of his pre-fight interviews, “I know I’m a huge underdog, but boxing is the only sport where once the bell rings, it’s a live fight, a live dog.”

Forbes is only 31 years old, to De La Hoya’s 35. He also has the benefit of being in more recent fights than De La Hoya, with 10 fights to De La Hoya’s mere two since September 2004. Forbes may also be able to adapt to De La Hoya’s height and reach advantage -- on The Contender, he has fought against boxers weighing as much as 168 lbs. Forbes was also the WBC World Junior Lightweight Champ for 2000-2002.

But with both fighting as middleweights, Forbes and De La Hoya both have to deal with fighting on a higher weight scale than they are used to -- they fought as a junior welterweight and welterweight, respectively, in their last bouts.

ABS-CBN and Balls will air the fight via satellite starting at 9 a.m. A re-broadcast is scheduled on Studio 23 for Monday, May 5, starting at 2 p.m., and on Balls on Friday, May 9 starting at 8 p.m.

source: abs-cbnNEWS.com