By Eric Thomas According to the latest boxing news, Oscar de La Hoya (39-6, 30 KOs) will be making an April 14th press conference in Los Angeles, at the Star Plaza to give say what Oscar is planning to do with his career. The word is that De La Hoya won’t be conducting the meeting to discuss any future fights or opponents, which gives one the impression that De La Hoya, 36, is planning on using this occasion to announce his retirement from the sport of boxing.
If that’s the case, then it comes to no real surprise, because De La Hoya has been largely ineffective in the ring dating back five years to 2004.
Since then, De La Hoya has won three fights, lost four, and one of his wins, his 12-round decision win over Felix Sturm in 2004, many people felt should have been yet another loss for De La Hoya. Yet, despite losing most of his fights, De La Hoya remained one of boxing’s biggest PPV attractions, thanks to his earlier achievements in the sport which included six world titles and a Gold Medal in the 1992 Olympics in the light division for the U.S. amateur boxing team.
De La Hoya’s most recent fight, a humiliating 8th round stoppage loss to former featherweight/Super featherweight and lightweight champion Manny Pacquiao, was a crushing blow for De La Hoya’s career because of the one-sided nature of the fight and also because of De La Hoya having such a big size advantage over Pacquiao going into the fight in December 2008.
Pacquiao opened a lot of eyes by giving De La Hoya a tremendous boxing lessons, battering him with blinding shots and giving him a thorough beating. For that fight, De La Hoya never been soundly beaten like that before.
Sure, Bernard Hopkins stopped De La Hoya in the 9th round of their match in 2004, but Oscar had done well in the fight until running out of gas in the 9th and getting stopped with a single body punch that left De La Hoya rolling around on the canvas moaning in pain.
De La Hoya also took a beating from the German based middleweight Felix Sturm, in an ill-advised tune-up fight before the Hopkins bout, but De La Hoya was at least semi competitive in that fight. That wasn’t the case in the Pacquiao at all. De La Hoya was beaten to the punch and savagely beaten from the 1st round until he quit on his stool following the 8th.
The quitting on his stool didn’t hold so well with many of his fans, who felt betrayed that De La Hoya would opt not to go out on his shield like a warrior by going down trying. For some people (De La Hoya’s critics) this just reinforced their opinions about him being a spoon fed prima donna who lost many of his biggest fights of his career, and who picked up many of his wins at the expense of old and washed up fighters like Julio Cesar Chavez and Pernell Whitaker.
De La Hoya remains a popular fighter regardless of his string of losses in the past five years, with many of the biggest stars in the sport vying for a shot at fighting him, although mostly because they realize that it would mean getting a huge payday because most of De La Hoya’s fights have been huge PPV events for the past decade.