Oscar de la Hoya is a rock, he is an island

As promotion for Mayweather-Marquez reaches the final stages, and the fight still struggling to capture the public's attention, it seems that Golden Boy Promotions chief Oscar de la Hoya is the lone man fighting for the team.

Mayweather says Marquez is too small and not good enough. Marquez's trainer Nacho Beristain says that Juan Manuel has gotten too big, lost his speed, and can't beat Mayweather without it. Even the HBO cameras seem to depict Marquez as such an enormous underdog that it's gone past great story territory and into a state that leaves people wondering why they'd pay money to watch these two duke it out.

But Oscar, ever the salesman, keeps plugging away. The retired champion says he's backing Marquez -- his fighter -- 100% and believes he can knock Floyd out. He's about the only one (besides Marquez, of course).

The other day, I said this about Oscar and his attempts to promote:

[T]he only guy that's been on the record over and over about this being a competitive fight is Oscar de la Hoya, who always sounds kind of like he's putting you on, but now sounds like he's flat-out grinning and lying and trying to take your money for a weak fight.

Part of me still feels this way, and I think it's too late for anyone to "save" this fight's financial outlook. But I'm starting to admire just how fake-smilin', gung ho Oscar can keep pretending to be in the face of the ton of adversity that is surrounding this fight. It's like the man is a machine.

And furthermore, he's about the only guy that's done his job promoting, and it's not even his company serving as lead promoter. Everyone else has painted this as a mismatch; Oscar keeps telling us it's a good fight and that Marquez can win.

It might not get this fight's business moving, but if the returns come back as bad as many are expecting, no one can really blame Oscar de la Hoya. God knows he's stuck with this fight.