Oscar De La Hoya barely wins, setting up Hopkins mega-fight

The middleweight will next tangle with Bernard Hopkins.
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Oscar De La Hoya was sore, discouraged and uncharacteristically subdued. An unknown German had nearly beaten him in his middleweight debut, and now De La Hoya was trying to explain what had gone wrong.
When he finished with that, De La Hoya had another, tougher task -- trying to assure everyone that his Sept. 18 fight with middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins would go on.
"The fight is happening, believe me the fight is happening," De La Hoya said. "I'm really looking forward to it."
Hopkins surely is too, especially after seeing the trouble De La Hoya had Saturday night in barely beating Felix Sturm to fulfill his part of the bargain and set up the September mega-fight.
No excuses
De La Hoya offered no excuses for his narrow win, which was clinched only after De La Hoya fought in a frenzy to pull out the final round and a 115-113 decision on all three ringside scorecards.
There was talk in his camp about a bad back and brittle hands, but that didn't explain the fact De La Hoya looked pudgy at 160 pounds and got hit all night long by Sturm's jab and inside right hands.
De La Hoya's plan was to bring Sturm over from Germany as his patsy, take his lightly regarded WBO title and set up the September fight with Hopkins that could earn him up to $30 million. It nearly all fell apart when Sturm not only put up a fight but bloodied De La Hoya's nose and seemed the stronger and fresher fighter.
"I have to admit I underestimated Felix Sturm," De La Hoya said.
Went right after him
De La Hoya went right after Sturm in the first round, trying to take him out. But Sturm ended the round with some good shots of his own and went back to his corner with his right hand held high, confident he was in a fight he could win.
If Sturm, whose 20 wins all came in Europe, proved so difficult, De La Hoya figures to be mismatched against Hopkins, who has made 18 title defenses and hasn't lost since dropping a decision to Roy Jones Jr. in 1993.
Hopkins won a cautious but easy decision over Robert Allen, then watched anxiously from his dressing room as De La Hoya ran into trouble with Sturm. Hopkins will make some $10 million to fight De La Hoya, a purse the likes he has never seen.
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