I went to see the doubleheader card on February 9, 1996 at Caesar’s Palace Sports Pavilion with Julio Cesar Chavez and Oscar De La Hoya fighting separate opponents. It was to set up the June 7 Super-Fight between both guys back at Caesar’s Palace. Many saw the fight as a passing of the guard from the living legend Chavez to the young champion De La Hoya. I personally never liked Chavez and knew I would be rooting hard against him when they met.
My brother and I went to see the Friday night fights on closed-circuit at the Pavilion in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Bob Arum chose to have the fight shown in arenas and theatres since many Mexicans didn’t have cable tv and promised to be a huge chunk of the paying audience. Unfortunately for me, I was driving up to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, New York the next morning to sell my boxing collages at the Induction Weekend Collector’s Show. That meant I had to set my alarm for 4 am so I could make the 350 mile drive in 6 hours to be there by 10 am.
A minute into the opening round, a huge gash opened up over Chavez’s eye that starting gushing blood. Chavez had suffered a bad cut during training and that’s what caused it to split open so quickly. For the next 4 rounds, Oscar continued to land blows at will on Julio, since he could barely see because of the cut. The inevitable occurred in the fourth round when referee Joe Cortez called a halt to the mess, awarding the WBC super lightweight title to De La Hoya. The whole night was disappointing to be honest, since the fight stunk and all I could think about was going home to get enough sleep.
Even if the cut hadn’t happened, I still think Oscar would have easily outboxed Chavez, who was past his prime at that point in his career. De La Hoya was the new face of boxing in a sport that needed him desperately. Because of the magnitude of the bout, to me it is still one of Boxing’s Classics.
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