By Eric Thomas: Former 10-time World champion Oscar De La Hoya (39-6, 30 KOs) will be holding a retirement part on September 19th. In attendance will be former star opponents of De La Hoya, which will possibly be famous stars like Bernard Hopkins, Shane Mosley, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Pernell Whitaker and Felix Trinidad. The meeting will take place during the Mexican independence day weekend. De La Hoya, 36, retired from boxing on Tuesday, putting a wrap on a 17-year career which included titles in six different divisions.
De La Hoya was stopped in his last fight of his career, an 8th round TKO loss to Manny Pacquiao on December 6th, 2008. A weight-drained De La Hoya was never competitive in the fight and took a lot of terrible punishment from Pacquiao until Oscar eventually quit on his stool after the 8th.
There was hope that De La Hoya might be able to continue his career at light middleweight, but after four months of soul searching, De La Hoya chose to hang up his gloves this past week.
Oscar’s retirement has left a lot of uncertainty about who will be the fighter to step in and take De La Hoya’s place as the number #1 draw in boxing. Some people are saying that Manny Pacquiao might be the one, or possibly Miguel Cotto, but that remains unlikely in both instances.
Pacquiao will likely never be able to get the crossover boxing fans that De La Hoya was able to get, and there’s not a large enough fan base for Pacquiao in the U.S. for him to even get close to the popularity of De La Hoya. Pacquiao will be popular, but not much more than many other fighters in different weight classes.
As for Cotto, he’s a very talented fighter no doubt about it. However, he’s probably not even the best fighter in the welterweight division and will likely take another beating like the one that he took at the hands of Antonio Margarito last year when Miguel eventually fights Paul Williams.
Besides the lack of a true number #1 status at welterweight, Cotto also doesn’t have the same kind of personality as De La Hoya. For starters, Cotto rarely smiles and laughs in the media, and his English language skills are average at best, making it hard for him to always be understood clearly by fans.
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