Good time at #CottoGeale last night. pic.twitter.com/ePCKkpJZPH

— Gennady Golovkin (@GGGBoxing) June 7, 2015

By Dan Ambrose: After recently making some noise about a possible comeback fight against IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golokvin (33-0, 30 KOs), 41-year-old Oscar De La Hoya is still thinking it over whether he should return to the ring to resume his pro career.

De La Hoya hasn’t fought in seven years since 2008, but he’s still young enough to continue fighting for a short period of time.

De La Hoya got a lot of boxing fans excited recently when he said he might return to the ring. But what was really surprising it De La Hoya saying that he would want to fight Golovkin if he turned to the ring. De La Hoya said he wants to fight the best.

It’s kind of interesting that De La Hoya didn’t choose the opportunity to build up his own fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, who despite still wearing the label of being a junior middleweight, he’s been fighting in the middleweight division since 2013 and hasn’t fought at junior middleweight since his fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2013.

“No, no, I haven’t said anything yet,” De La Hoya said to Fighthype about a possible comeback fight against Golovkin. “Well, I think about it every day. I’m not about small fights. I’m about fighting the very best.”

With the way that De La Hoya spoke, it was as if he didn’t want to discuss the comeback. This could mean that De La Hoya was just talking to get some attention, and wasn’t serious about a comeback. De La Hoya might also be thinking about the punishment he’d take against a puncher like Golovkin. It would probably be a bad beating for De La Hoya, much worse than the beating he received in his loss to Manny Pacquiao in 2008.

A lot of boxing fans believe that De La Hoya would be coming back in order to get a big paycheck so that he could use that money for his promotional company Golden Boy. You’ve got to believe that a fight against Golovkin would bring De La Hoya a fairly substantial payday. It wouldn’t be the kind of money that Mayweather and Pacquiao received recently for their mega-fight, but it would be a big enough payday for De La Hoya to walk away with a nice paycheck. I don’t know that De La Hoya has seen big money since his loss to Pacquiao in 2008.

It would obviously be a big positive for De La Hoya to get one more payday before stepping away from the game for good. I think if De La Hoya does come back, he’d retire afterwards immediately, especially if he fought someone like Golovkin. It would be kind of like how Sugar Ray Leonard made a comeback at age 41 in his fight against the late Hector “Macho” Camacho in 1997, and was subsequently stopped in the 5th round by the Macho Man. Leonard then retired for good.

I think we’d see the same from De La Hoya, only he’d likely get a much bigger payday than Leonard did. Leonard had been out of the ring for six years when he fought Camacho in 1997, and he looked nothing like the fighter he’d once been. A prime De La Hoya easily defeated Camacho in his very next fight in 1997 in beating him by a lopsided 12 round decision.