By Sean McDaniel: Oscar De La Hoya finally pulled the trigger on his sinking career today by announcing his retirement in a press conference at the Staples Center, in Los Angeles. De La Hoya had been kicking around the idea of retirement since being defeated by Manny Pacquiao in December when De La Hoya was stopped in the 8th. The loss seemed to really effect De La Hoya (39-6, 30 KOs), sending him in isolation for a period of time after.
For De La Hoya, it wasn’t the first time that he had been beaten in his career, because he had lost three fights in the past six fights already. However, it was the way that De La Hoya was beaten that caused him to lose interest in continuing his career.
Retirements in boxing are much like retirements in professional wrestling, and in many cases have little meaning because fighters rarely stick to them. De La Hoya could very well be back in the near future, although he didn’t hint about coming back at the press conference.
De La Hoya’s situation is a lot different than most professional athletes, however, because Oscar has made hundreds of millions of dollars and isn’t in need of another payday. Yet, I still suspect that Oscar will be back for one or two more fights before he finally hangs up his gloves for good.
De La Hoya has wins over a number of big named fighters like Fernando Vargas, Julio Cesar Chavez, Felix Sturm, Ricardo Mayorga and Hector Camacho. Most of the wins came much earlier in Oscar’s career before he became fabulously rich and started his Golden Boy promotional company.
De La Hoya continued to be a huge box office draw late in his career when he was no longer relevant in the sport in terms of talent. His name alone was enough to sell out a fight and guarantee a huge PPV fight, even if he had little chance to win the fights.
For the past six years, Oscar has been mostly a part time fighter, taking two years off after being knocked out by Bernard Hopkins in a 9th round stoppage in 2004, and then another year off after De La Hoya’s victory over Mayorga, and then still yet another year off after his 12-round decision loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2007. It seemed as if De La Hoya wasn’t committed to the sport even back then and was literally asking for trouble.
Even if De La Hoya had stuck his nose to the grindstone all these years and trained consistently, I still think he’d be right where he is today with his retirement. I think his body aged too much over the years and the fighters got better at the same time.
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