Hand Injury Causes Worry

Less than a month before his rematch against Shane Mosley, Oscar De La Hoya has reinjured his left hand sufficiently to suspend sparring sessions, undergo medical tests and wonder if it will cut short his career.

De La Hoya, however, vows that his Sept. 13 super-welterweight title fight against Mosley at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand Garden Arena will not be postponed. And both De La Hoya’s promoter, Bob Arum, and his physical therapist, Anthony Garcia, are downplaying the severity of the injury.

“Everybody who says it is fine,” De La Hoya said, “doesn’t feel the pain.”

The pain has bothered De La Hoya for some time. The damaged area is just above the wrist. De La Hoya complained about it in a fight against Felix Trinidad in September 1999 and the first Mosley match in June 2000.

“It was always bothering me, but we are fighters and we have to tough it out,” he said at the time.

In December 2001, De La Hoya canceled a fight against Roman Karmazin in order to have torn cartilage removed from the wrist.

But he reinjured the hand in 2002, causing him to postpone a fight against Fernando Vargas, and then strained it last May in his fight against Yory Boy Campas.

De La Hoya wore a soft cast until the injury healed and has been wearing a protective brace in camp to shield the tender area, but Friday, in a sparring session, he threw a punch that caused the shock waves of pain to return.

“When I felt the pain,” he said, “all these bad things came into my head. [I thought], ‘Oh, I’m going to have to postpone the fight. Oh, my career is over.’ But that only lasted two minutes. This fight will not be postponed. I have trained too hard for it to be postponed. I won’t do it. It will be good. Everything will be fine.”

But then, contradicting himself, De La Hoya admitted everything is not fine.

“When I hit something with a solid punch with the left hand,” he said, “there is a pinching feeling. When I punch hard, it’s there. I can’t do anything about it. It doesn’t go away. I don’t think it will ever go away.”

De La Hoya hasn’t sparred since Friday, losing time especially crucial this close to the fight. With his physician, Tony Daly, not due to return to town until sometime next week, De La Hoya plans to return to sparring this Friday, but says he will use only his right hand.

“I’m not at all concerned,” Garcia said. “There is no swelling. The pain levels are down. It is a compression injury caused by straight blows. It will flare up from time to time because of the surgery. We are using rehabilitation [therapy] to build the hand up.”

While De La Hoya wouldn’t concede that the Mosley fight was in danger of being put on hold, he didn’t hesitate when asked if the injury could prematurely end his career.

“Positively,” he said. “If you’re fighting guys who want to kill you, you can’t go in there with one hand.”