Oscar Needs Some Help in His Corner

It’s too bad that Oscar De La Hoya can’t use some of the courage he displayed in the Shane Mosley fight to counter the bad advice he gets from a father who appears to be living his life through the success of his son. De La Hoya will never be the champion he should be until he stops listening to the wrong people. He has the heart and the skills, but he doesn’t have the corner, and that’s why Sugar now wears the crown.

SHEL WILLENS, Los Angeles

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Great fighters find a way to win big fights. De La Hoya has made a name for himself beating up on over-the-hill great fighters staggered between some tomato cans. When he runs into great fighters, he does not fare too well. He barely beat Ike Quartey and he lost to Trinidad and Mosley. Now we know why he is not fighting Fernando Vargas.

WILLIS BARTON, Los Angeles

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Sugar Shane and De La Hoya put on a show that should have been a journalist’s dream to report, but instead Bill Dwyre [June 18] squanders it by joining the long and clueless list of those who align Muhammad Ali with the perils of pugilism. Granted, it is a tragedy that Ali has Parkinson’s disease, but how much less of a tragedy is it than the thousands upon thousands of people who never followed their ambition, never really gave their potential a fair shot?

Everybody is something, and what’s truly tragic is to go through life and never extend yourself enough to find out what that something is. Dwyre shouldn’t waste his column on feeling sorry for someone who found out he was the greatest.

DOUGLAS LITTLETON, Pasadena