Sugar Ray Leonard is regarded as one of the greatest pound-for-pound fighters of all time, so Oscar De La Hoya putting a rising star in the same company as his fellow five-division world champion is high praise indeed.
Leonard claimed world honours at welterweight, super-welterweight, middleweight, super-middleweight and light-heavyweight, becoming just the second fighter in history to capture belts in five different weight divisions, just days after Thomas Hearns became the first.
The Wilmington-born fan-favourite is also deemed by many to be the best of the legendary ‘Four Kings’, due to the fact that he is the only member to hold a win over all three of his rivals – Hearns, Roberto Duran and Marvin Hagler.
All of the above and more mean Leonard is held in extremely high regard amongst boxing fans, but De La Hoya told Fight Hub TV why his fighter, Floyd Schofield, reminds him of the North Carolina sensation.
“Lucas Bahdi, you can’t look over him, he has got a lot of amateur experience which obviously makes me feel and believe [that he could do it]. I have studied him, he is a hard worker, he has got great work ethic inside of the ring and he crosses all of his ’T’s’ and dots all of his ‘I’s’, but he hasn’t been in there with a ‘Kid Austin’ [Schofield].”
“Kid Austin is a beast who just has it all. The speed, the power, the endurance but most importantly – and I have said this before – Kid Austin reminds me of Sugar Ray Leonard because of his will to win.”
“I really feel like Kid Austin will try and beat you at any cost, that is what I love about him.”
Schofield faces Lucas Bahdi for the vacant WBA lightweight world title on Saturday night in Chicago, with Ricardo Sandoval seeking to defend his unified WBC and WBA flyweight world titles against late-notice opponent Sergio Mendoza Cordova in the co-main event.
Should ‘Kid Austin’ move to 20-0 and become world champion in the process, he is likely to target unifications against the division’s other champions in William Zepeda and Abdullah Mason. At just 24 years old, he certainly has the potential to follow in Leonard’s footsteps and conquer more than one weight class.
