By Matt Stein: Oscar De La Hoya (39-6, 30 KOs) would probably be the first to admit that he got destroyed in his last fight, an 8th round stoppage loss to Pound-for-pound boxing star Manny Pacquiao on December 6th, but that probably won’t have any bearing on whether Oscar, 35, will consider retirement. In fact, retirement probably isn’t even something that De La Hoya is considering. After all, his fight with Pacquiao generated 1.25 million buys, making $70 million.
Not bad for a fighter that has lost four out of his last seven fights. The seventy million was Oscar’s 3rd highest PPV bout ever, following only the $71 million he made against Felix Trinidad and the $120 mil De La Hoya made for his mega fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2007. At this point, it probably doesn’t matter who De La Hoya fights, he’ll do well and make a lot of money.
But he’s probably not looking to take on just anyone, and you can expect whoever he decides on fighting, it will be a popular fighter with a big name. Recently, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., a young contender who has faced largely no one, has been mentioned as a potential opponent for De La Hoya.
The rumor has it that the fight will take place in Mexico City in front of a large crowd in the Aztec Stadium, which has a maximum capacity of 105,000. However, I’m not so sure that De La Hoya will do this. The young Chavez Jr., the son of the famous boxer Julio Cesar Chavez, isn’t a fight that would excite many people beyond Mexico, given the fact that Chavez Jr. hasn’t fought any real quality opponents as of yet in his early professional career, and at the same time, he’s not particularly well known – or liked by those that do know of him – by the American public.
As such, De La Hoya probably won’t opt to go this route. If he’s to continue fighting, he’ll probably want to go after an already established star, someone like Joe Calzaghe, Ricky Hatton, Mayweather, Pacquiao, or Shane Mosley. Unfortunately, boxing has done such a terrible job of building up new stars in recent years, perhaps due to the habit of the biggest stars in boxing repeatedly taking on faded stars like De La Hoya instead of younger ones.
Because of that, De La Hoya has only a small pool of popular fighters to draw from. That is, unless he wants to pull someone like Felix Trinidad or Fernando Vargas from retirement for a bout. That’s not likely to happen – at least not yet.
For a fight to generate huge PPV bucks, De La Hoya needs a current star to fight against, and he’d probably make much less against a fighter from the past. It’s doubtful that Pacquiao would be a potential opponent because the fight was so one-sided, and De La Hoya has done nothing to redeem himself since then. De La Hoya, naturally, could go ahead and fight him anyway, but I think he’d be stupid to do it.
He’d look bad, too. With Hatton, De La Hoya’s going to have to wait in line, because Hatton already is scheduled for a fight against Pacquiao in May. After that, who knows? However, if Hatton gets lucky and beats Pacquiao, then Ricky has a lot of other options available to him other fighting a faded De La Hoya.
Mayweather, 31, would be an interested fight for De La Hoya, but Oscar would probably have to give Floyd a bigger cut of the pay, maybe 50%, in order to lure him into taking the fight. I doubt that will happen, though. A fight against Calzaghe would be an excellent bout. De La Hoya, of course, would lose badly, but he’d make a ton of money which would partially nurse his hurt feelings. The best of all, De La Hoya might be able to get through the entire bout without getting beaten to a pulp like he was against Pacquiao.
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