Ringside From Carson

So I'm here at last at the Home Depot Center, ringside for De La Hoya/Forbes after some unbelievable traffic and more hassle from security than my press pass should have granted me. Vicious Victor Ortiz is in the ring making painfully quick work of Dairo Esalas in the primary undercard. Ole Dairo is wearing some very suspicious looking vinyl trunks that give him the look of a man on his way to a quick exit. Every now and then after he eats four or five head-snapping shots in a row, he pounds his chest half-heartedly as if to say he's loving it. I'm highly dubious of this message.

Very Latino crowd in the house as might have been imagined, and the house is pretty packed on the whole. It's great to be in a stadium environment for a big fight, even if the fight itself seems like something of a sham.

Oh dear. Good night Dairo. Straight right hand. Now for the kill. Victor wades in and... holy crap he countered Ortiz! Oritz is down. Jeez. I'll keep you posted on this one. Two knockdowns in the third round.

The ring-card girls, oh they are so L.A. I can't stand it. Blonde, long and siliconned to the gills and with the dead eyes of meat-is-murder. My colleague to my left informs me that the celeb scene is meager at best -- they all went to the Derby evidently. He also tells me that my Brooklyn boy Danny Jacobs was devastating in his undercard bout, a KO within a minute or so of the first round that I'm sorry indeed to have missed.

I'll have another post or two before Oscar makes the scene. I sense a heavy mariachi presence in the house. It won't be long now -- Ortiz just sent Esalas to the canvas with a timber-style knockout of note. Bernard Hopkins is in the ring wearing a peach shirt. Of all the sights in the world.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.