Boxing

The two questions that lingered longest after Oscar De La Hoya's 12-round dominance of Steve Forbes on Saturday night were these: If he can't knock out Forbes, how is he going to knock out Floyd Mayweather Jr. in September? When was the last time Oscar fought so energetically in the final rounds? To the first question, De La Hoya's trainer and Mayweather Jr.'s father, Floyd Sr.

"Sugar" Shane Mosley's scheduled May 31 welterweight fight against former world champion Zab Judah has been canceled, and is in jeopardy of not being rescheduled, Judah's manager said Thursday. The manager, Michael Shinefield, said Judah, 30, suffered a badly cut right arm May 1 when he slipped in a Las Vegas boxing gym's shower and fell through a glass shower door.

Unbeaten world champion boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. backed out of negotiations for a September rematch against Oscar De La Hoya on Friday by announcing his retirement. "It is with a heavy heart that I . . . have decided to permanently retire from boxing," Mayweather Jr., 31, wrote in a letter distributed by his publicist. "This decision was not an easy one for me to make as boxing is all I have done since I was a child.

Dripping with sweat, Bakr Sallih lunges toward his opponent and delivers a cracking punch to the jaw. "Easy," chides his coach. "I want wisdom. I don't want force." Less than a year ago, the lean 17-year-old was running the streets of Adhamiya with a Kalashnikov, defending the Sunni Arab enclave from attacks from the surrounding Shiite Muslim districts in east Baghdad. But that was then, he says. Now, his fights are confined to the boxing ring at the Adhamiya Sports Club.

LAS VEGAS -- Antonio Margarito's dismantling of Miguel Cotto at the MGM Grand on Saturday laid waste to more than just Cotto's unbeaten record and his goal of unifying the welterweight title. It also changed the landscape of the division, leaving a number of proposed matchups now unlikely and sending several fighters scrambling for opponents. Although it will take some time for the dust to settle, gone, apparently, is any hope of a big-money bout between Oscar De La Hoya and Cotto.

BEIJING -- Juan Estrada knows time is not on his side. So like a battered fighter waiting for the bell, he holds, clinches, leans against the ropes -- anything to stay on his feet a little longer. Doctors told him he had two weeks to live. That was six months ago, yet Estrada isn't ready to go just yet. For 23 years, he has been training his son to be an Olympic boxer.

Negotiations about a possible fight between Oscar De La Hoya and Manny Pacquiao stalled Wednesday after the fighters failed to reach an agreement on the split of the purse, said Bob Arum, who represents Pacquiao. De La Hoya offered Pacquiao a 30% share of the purse from the proposed Dec. 6 fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, but Pacquiao was seeking 40%, Arum said. "They were adamant at 70-30 and weren't going to move," Arum said.

BEIJING -- Boxer Shawn Estrada came here with a rather simple goal: get into the ring as fast as possible so his ill father could see him fight in the Olympics before he died. He accomplished that only hours after the opening ceremony, dominating Argentina's Ezequiel Maderna en route to a 10-2 victory that earned him a spot in Saturday's round of 16. And there, Estrada said, he'll be fighting for himself as well as his father.

BEIJING -- For most of the last 11 months Shawn Estrada has lived in a cocoon that only boxing has been allowed to penetrate. But that was a sacrifice he was willing to make for a chance at Olympic glory. Saturday, however, his Olympic dream came to an end with an 11-5 loss to Britain's James DeGale in the second round of the middleweight competition. And as Estrada is about to find out, the real world he left nearly a year ago isn't the same one he's returning to.

BEIJING -- Oh, how Howard Cosell would mock this. Having followed the halcyon days of Cassius and Smokin' Joe and Big George and the young Sugar Ray, how it would have pained the perspicacious Howard to watch these pusillanimous pugilists of our 2008 U.S. Olympic boxing team land with a thud and a dud.