Make that money and get paid....

Just finished watching the latest travesty in the career of the "Golden Boy" Oscar De La Hoya, and it illustrates why I dislike the upper end of the boxing spectrum, the Lewises and Hopkinses and De La Hoyas of the world. For those of you not in the know, a week ago Saturday, Oscar De La Hoya and Bernard Hopkins had tuneup fights on PPV for their September 18th money match, which will also air on PPV. Hopkins made easy work of Robert Allen, carrying him to a 12-round decision which could have easily been an earlier KO. De La Hoya then fought Felix Sturm, a German middleweight with the WBO title. Sturm was unknown to me, and the HBO commentators made much of the fact that Sturm was generally below Oscar's level somehow, even though Oscar was fighting his first match at 160. Well, it didn't quite work out that way, as Sturm dominated much of the fight, snapping hard jabs at De La Hoya at will, and winning every round after the fourth. Unfortunately for Sturm, he couldn't knock De La Hoya down, because if he had, I think the Nevada judges would have had to give him the fight. As it was, the judges incredulously(or maybe not so; More on that in a second) gave De La Hoya a 115-113 decision.

Larry Merchant had a very telling comment as we waited for the decision. He observed that it would be interesting to see whether the judges were going to throw away the cash cow that will be Hopkins/De La Hoya, and no sooner did he say that then the decision came back. De La Hoya was at least willing to admit that he had nothing, while not giving any kind of credit to the fact that Sturm whipped his ass. Then they brought out Hopkins, who spouted exactly the kind of platitudes that you'd expect from a man looking forward to a multi-million dollar payday in three months. Last was Sturm, who was rightfully pissed and pointed out in so many words that he got jobbed by the judges.(He subsequently filed a protest, which will go nowhere.) His last comment was that "Everyone out there knows who won this fight." He's right.

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Bad Blood was Sunday night. I forgot about posting my predictions here, but it was just as well, because the ones I put on ITVR were spectacularly wrong. It was an okay show, but what does it say that the match that I was entertained most by was the comedy match?
Eugene put on another highly entertaining show, as he beat the Coach using the Junkyard Dog's moveset, then finished the Coach off with a Rock Bottom and a Stunner. The non-comedy match of the night was Randy Orton/Shelton Benjamin, which shone despite Evolution-ference. Benjamin unforunately lost again, but if it leads to another Orton/Benjamin match at Vengance, then I'm all about that. The Main Event Hell In A Cell match between HHH and HBK was just too damn long and not brutal enough. Thom and I were both just about dozing off during it, and 47 minutes including intros is just too damn long for a HIAC not involving, as Shaddax puts it, base jumps off the top of the cage.

Apparently HHH is going to have to beat Eugene next week on Raw in order to be Number One Contender. That should be interesting. HHH has been putting the new kids over lately, so it will be interesting to see if he puts Eugene over as well. And also, Lita is apparently "pregnant" with Kane's demon seed. Hopefully they'll do this storyline well and we won't be stuck with another Katie Vick-level storyline.(If you have to ask, you don't want to know.)