As the echo of the final bell lingered, HBO's boxing team declared Oscar De La Hoya a winner - an easy, comfortable winner - over Shane Mosley in Saturday's light middleweight title fight.
It wasn't even close, they screamed. It was De La Hoya, De La Hoya, De La Hoya.
And when it wasn't, when the judges all scored it 115-113 for Mosley, the crew of Jim Lampley, George Foreman, Larry Merchant and Harold Lederman reacted with the same indignation a child might show had his favorite toy been ripped away.
De La Hoya is a pay-per-view draw for HBO like no other fighter, including heavyweights. Saturday's fight had a remarkable 975,000 buys, or $50.2-million in PPV revenue. Only Oscar.
Fans bought into the fight hype; HBO's crew bought into Oscar.
For the most part, the public followed suit. While some callers to area and national sports-talk radio defended the decision, most agreed with the HBO crew. And why wouldn't they? Showing the true hypnotic powers of sports announcers, especially those who do boxing, Lampley and Foreman spent 12 rounds extolling the talents of De La Hoya, repeating over and over that he was carving Mosley up. Listen to that for an hour and you too will be a believer.
That they disagreed with the decision is not so unusual. They often do, and decisions are often bad. But not this one. For a fight this close, their language was surprisingly vitriolic. Foreman, who is entertaining but often embarrasses himself on broadcasts, went as far as to demand an investigation, saying, "Something is wrong here."
Indeed there was - fans got a completely biased broadcast. HBO was clearly in De La Hoya's corner from start to finish. The announcers gave Mosley no chance. It's not as if Lederman, HBO's paid scorer, had it 117-111 for De La Hoya - he had it 115-113, close enough that you would think the score going the other way wouldn't be viewed as a travesty.
CompuBox numbers indicated De La Hoya landed more punches, which was enough evidence to fool HBO and make Saturday's loser sore. The compu in CompuBox lends itself to infallibility. It's a computer, right? They don't make mistakes. But just who is entering the data? Human beings. CompuBox is no more gospel than the opinions of ringside judges.
Fact is, most of the writers ringside, who did not have access to CompuBox's numbers, scored it for Mosley. But everyone agreed it could have gone either way.
Except for HBO's crew, who thought the fight was lopsided.
But consider this: Even Lampley admitted to the Los Angeles Times that he might have been influenced by listening in on Jack Mosley, Shane's father and trainer, who pleaded with his son that he needed a knockout. "I was heavily influenced Saturday night by the fact that I thought Shane and Jack were sure they were losing the fight," Lampley said. "Now, since then, I've thought carefully about that ... I shouldn't be influenced by that."
The question then: Were you influenced by 12 rounds of pro-De La Hoya coverage? When HBO replays the fight at 9:45 p.m. Saturday, mute your set, watch, and then decide.
