By Manuel Perez: Like a lot of people, I’m conflicted about whether it would be best for “The Golden Boy” Oscar De La Hoya (39-6, 30 KOs) to retire from the sport of boxing. On Tuesday, April 14th, De La Hoya, 36, will make an announcement in a press conference at the Staples Center, in Los Angeles, California. If I were to read the tea leaves about what De La Hoya will say about his career on Tuesday my guess is that he’ll probably say that he’s going to be handing up his gloves for good.
It’s hard to blame if he does, because he’s accomplished a heck of a lot in the sport, winning a Gold Medal in the 1992 Olympics for the United States along with winning titles in the lightweight, welterweight, junior middleweight and middleweight divisions in his 17 year professional boxing career.
To top it off, De La Hoya founded Golden Boy Promotions in 2001, a company which will likely be the biggest boxing promotional company in the for a long time into the future.
De La Hoya has made hundreds of millions of dollars in PPV fights and is the most successful boxer ever in that department despite having limited success against some of the biggest names in boxing such as Shane Mosley, Bernard Hopkins and Manny Pacquiao. De La Hoya has since made Hopkins and Mosley members of his company.
With success, De La Hoya has also been a disappointment. He struggled to beat an old Pernell Whitaker in April 1997, and lost to Felix Trinidad by 12 round decision in September 1999 in a fight that De La Hoya was winning easily until choosing to try and coast in the last four rounds of the fight.
Losses to Shane Mosley in 2000 and 2003 also took away from the legacy of De La Hoya, as did De La Hoya’s questionable 12-round decision victory over middleweight Felix Sturm in June 2004, a fight which set up a bout against IBF/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins in September 2004. De La Hoya fought well, got tired, and then was knocked out with a body shot in the 9th.
You could say that things didn’t go all that well for De La Hoya in the ring from 2003 to the present time, although that’s in comparison to what he achieved earlier in his career. De La Hoya took two years off from the sport after the Hopkins fight and then came back to defeat Ricardo Mayorga by a 6th round stoppage in May 2006 to win the World Boxing Council (WBC) light middleweight championship.
De La Hoya then was defeated by Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a 12-round split decision in May 2007. De La Hoya fought well for most of the fight but faded enough in the end for Mayweather to get the win. The mistake after that fight was for De La Hoya to take another year off from boxing, which wasn’t good considering he had already taken off two years after the Hopkins loss and another year off after the win over Mayorga in 2006.
The vast amounts of time off from the sport seemed to have an effect on De La Hoya in bout with Steve Forbes in May 2008, causing De La Hoya to get hit more than he ever had before in winning a 12-round decision.
By that time, it was clear that much of De La Hoya’s skills had eroded from the effects of the time off and the natural aging process. De La Hoya then chose to fight Manny Pacquiao, a small lightweight in his prime. De La Hoya ended up taking a terrible one-sided beating ending with him quitting on his stool after the 8th round.
I think there’s little reason for De La Hoya to continue fighting and I expect him to retire. However, he probably has enough left to beat an older fighter like Felix Trinidad or enough to cause someone small like Ricky Hatton a few problems. But, I think De La Hoya probably doesn’t want to suffer another defeat like the one he experienced in his bout with Pacquiao, and that will probably be enough for him to retire.
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