By Jim Maltzman: Conor McGregor has accepted the challenge of former six-division world champion Oscar De La Hoya after he boldly predicted that he’d knock him out in two rounds if the two were to fight inside a boxing ring.
De La Hoya vs. McGregor can potentially make a lot of money for both fighters. McGregor’s fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. brought in 4.3 million pay-per-view buys in 2017. The fight took place at a weight of 154 pounds, and McGregor made a guaranteed $30 million.
Although the 47-year-old De La Hoya has been retired for 12 years since his loss to Manny Pacquiao in 2008, he would have a tremendous advantage over McGregor inside the ring. As long as De La Hoya (39-6, 30 KOs) makes it through training camp in one piece, he would be a real handful for McGregor to deal with in a boxing match.
Dela Hoya will have a big advantage in skills
Unlike Mayweather, who can’t punch, De La Hoya would have so many different tools to take McGregor out with quickly.
The UFC star McGregor, 31, has only had one professional fight under the rules of boxing in losing to Floyd Mayweather Jr. by a 10th round knockout in August 2017 in a one-sided battle.
Many fans said afterward that it appeared that Mayweather carried McGregor to the 10th round and that he could have knocked him out in the first round if he’d tried. Although McGregor is a great MMA fighter, his boxing skills appeared to be at the elementary level, and it wasn’t even remotely interesting to watch him getting outclassed by Floyd.
“Oh, come on. Two rounds,” said Dela Hoya to CBS State of Combat Podcast when asked about a fight between him and McGregor. “One thing about me, I went for the kill always. Conor McGregor, I love him in the octagon, and I respect him. I watch him all the time, but the boxing ring is a whole different story,” said De La Hoya.
I accept your challenge, Oscar de la Hoya.
— Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) May 7, 2020
De La Hoya is considerably younger than former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield, both of which are in their 50s. It would be crazy for De La Hoya to return to the ring to fight a current top fighter in boxing, but he’s likely got more than enough talent left in the toolkit to defeat McGregor or any MMA fighter that is reasonably close to the same weight class as him.
De La Hoya might struggle if he were to face a heavyweight from the MMA sport, but not someone around his weight.
Oscar doesn’t need the money
De La Hoya has a net worth of $200 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. For De La Hoya to want to take the fight with McGregor, he would need to be motivated because the need for money wouldn’t be the overriding desire like it would for the average person.
De La Hoya fighting McGregor would be a good way of drawing attention to his promotional company Golden Boy Promotions, and that’s one positive that could come out of the fight. It obviously wouldn’t hurt for De La Hoya to add to his vast fortune by fighting McGregor in a fight that he would be a considerable favorite to win.
Six years ago, De La Hoya kicked around the idea of making a comeback to fight middleweight champion Gennadiy Golovkin. Still, he then decided against it after speaking with his family.
It was arguably the right decision for Oscar to make at the time, as Golovkin would have indeed destroyed him. But in the case of McGregor, that’s a fight that De La Hoya likely wins, even if he only has a quarter of the skills he once possessed.
