This Is One Decision You Can Take at Face Value

Controversy? What controversy?

If you had Oscar De La Hoya winning, you are as wobbly as he was.

If you had De La Hoya winning, you are suffering from his same blood-soaked vision.

If you did not agree with all three judges and most ringside observers that Sugar Shane Mosley won a close but unanimous decision in a super-welterweight championship upset Saturday, you need to visit a fight doctor, slide into an MRI machine, and have your scorecard examined.

De La Hoya dominated early. Mosley fought back to deadlock it with two rounds remaining.

Then Pomona dished out six minutes of fury upon East Los Angeles that could -- and maybe should -- knock De La Hoya into retirement.

In the end, it was about Mosley’s fist on De Le Hoya’s face, Mosley’s fist on De La Hoya’s ribs, Mosley’s will over De La Hoya’s exhaustion.

In the end, it was about Mosley striding into a backpedaling De La Hoya like an old-West gunslinger striding into a saloon, eyes wide, hands blazing.

De La Hoya’s only late-round strength appeared after the final bell when he jumped on ring posts with his arms extended in a victorious pose that looked more like pleading than celebrating.

The surprise wasn’t that Mosley won, 115-113, on all three cards.

The surprise was that anybody would think it would be anything different.

Especially the beaten champion.

“Obviously, I thought won the fight,” De La Hoya said. “I didn’t even think it was close.”

He was joined by the influential HBO pay-per-view announcers, who stoked the fire by saying it was one of the worst decisions in boxing history, which is one of the most misguided stances in boxing history.

The poor sportsmanship continued when De La Hoya said he was going to protest the decision, and promoter Bob Arum said he was going to take his ball and go home.

“I am out of this,” said Arum, referring to the Las Vegas fight scene. “I think this is such an outrage that I’m never, ever going to be a party to this again.”

Talk about believing your own hype.

What did all these De La Hoya employees and apologists think? That because his charisma had carried this fight for the last two months, he could simply show up and throw a few punches and win?

What did they think this was, a coronation?

If so, then the king ended it slumped on his throne, his crown askew, gasping for breath and lucky to be upright.

Indeed, De La Hoya won the battle of punch statistics, but boxing is battle of rounds, and De La Hoya didn’t spread the pain like Mosley.

Said Mosley: “I felt stronger than him. I felt overwhelmingly stronger than him.”

Countered De La Hoya: “This was not even as close as the Trinidad fight.”

Glad he brought that up. While many folks will claim that De La Hoya unfairly lost this fight as he lost the Felix Trinidad fight -- simply because he tried to stay out of trouble in the final rounds -- there are two big differences.

In the Trinidad fight, De La Hoya had built up a big enough lead early in the fight that, perhaps, the late rounds shouldn’t have mattered so much.

In this fight, he had no lead going into the final two rounds.

Also, in the Trinidad fight, it was strategy that kept him from landing many blows in the final rounds.

In this fight, it was stamina.

De La Hoya was clearly tired. Mosley was charging directly into his jab and there was little De La Hoya could do about it.

De La Hoya surely knew he needed to win at least one of those final two rounds to win the fight, yet he couldn’t muster the strength to throw the big punch.

Or maybe he didn’t know. Maybe wacky trainer Floyd Mayweather, as many feared, did not properly instruct his fighter at the end.

Maybe De La Hoya will not retire, but here’s guessing Mayweather has worked his last fight in De La Hoya’s corner.

“Losing never crossed our minds,” said Mayweather.

Well, it should have.

“I can’t believe this happened in Las Vegas,” said Mayweather.

So maybe they not only believed the hype, but also the geography, the fact that De La Hoya promoter Arum brings so much money into his adopted hometown of Las Vegas, local fight judges would never turn on him.

The whiners also said it was the gore.

“They scored the blood,” claimed George Foreman, one of the HBO announcers.

He was referring to the accidental head butt in the fourth round that opened a cut over De La Hoya’s right eye.

It was the only time anyone can remember De La Hoya bleeding during the fight. But it was far from being Vitali Klitschko-type blood, and far from being a factor.

All three L.A. Times scorecards, from three writers who rarely agree on anything, gave Mosley a close decision.

De La Hoya thinks he was jobbed, the heck with giving credit to Mosley, and he’s going to keep fighting.

“I’m going to put on a full investigation to get to the bottom of this,” De La Hoya said late Saturday, the Golden Boy sounding like a Golden Baby.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com