By Dan Ambrose: After years of talking about wanting to make a comeback, ‘Golden Boy’ Oscar De La Hoya finally announced on Friday that he plans on returning to the ring on July 3rd in a dramatic mic-dropping announcement during the Jake Paul vs. Ben Askren press conference for their April 17th fight on Triller.

The fact that De La Hoya made the announcement during a Triller promoted Paul-Askren event obviously means that he’ll be fighting in an event on that network rather than on DAZN, which is the platform that his Golden Boy Promotions fighters compete on.

The obvious question is, why now? Is De La Hoya broke and in need of money? Is his Golden Boy company doing well? They just lost Canelo Alvarez, and there’s no one to replace him with Golden Boy.

Ryan Garcia, the guy that De La Hoya has been banking on to be Golden Boy’s next star, appears to be looking to cash out against Manny Pacquiao or Tank Davis.

Ryan’s career will likely be over after he loses to those guys. We just saw Vergil Ortiz Jr, another one of De La Hoya’s fighters he’s hoping would become Golden Boy’s next star, struggle to beat Maurice Hooker. Vergil looks like the furthest thing you can get from a star.

So, why is De La Hoya coming back now?

Triller is paying undisputed lightweight champion Teofimo Lopez roughly $4 million for a fight that few U.S boxing fans are interested in seeing against George Kambosos Jr.

If Triller is willing to pay Teofimo huge money for a fight that might bring in more than a few buys on PPV, what will they pay De La Hoya?

“July 3, I’m making my comeback,” De La Hoya told Triller co-owner Snoop Doggy Dog on Friday in Las Vegas.

What’s disappointing is how De La Hoya wordlessly dropped the mic and walked out without staying around to answer questions.

If De La Hoya is going to on Triller pay-per-view on July 3rd, at least he could do is give the fans some hints about the type of opponent that he’ll be facing. After all, the boxing fans are going to be the ones that are going to be asked to pay to see the 48-year-old De La Hoya (39-6, 30 KOs)

It’s nice that De La Hoya tried hard to be theatrical and mysterious simultaneously, but it would have had more of an impact if he stayed there for five minutes and filled in the details on his opponent selection and training.

You could tell from looking at the puffy-looking De La Hoya with the slight paunch that he needs to lose a lot of weight because he doesn’t resemble a professional athlete right now.

Is De La Hoya coming back just for a cash-grab against someone completely out of his league like Gennadiy Golovkin, or is he going to face a lesser guy with hopes of winning?

If De La Hoya takes on someone like GGG, it’ll be a one-and-done situation with his comeback. De La Hoya will get knocked out and ride off into the sunset with the millions he makes from the fight.

The obvious question fans would ask is why isn’t De La Hoya fighting on DAZN, and the answer is that he likely doesn’t have a contract with them to fight on that platform.

There’s a lot of questions that fans have about De La Hoya’s July 3rd comeback fight. Besides not knowing who the opponent will be, what division will it be fought at, and where will it be staged?

De La Hoya has insisted in recent interviews that he wants to fight top-level opposition. It’s believed that De La Hoya will face a welterweight but in the 154-lb division.

The choices are limited at 147 for De La Hoya if he wants to bring in many pay-per-view buys. These some of the likely options De La Hoya will choose from:

Errol Spence Jr
Terence Crawford
Manny Pacquiao
Mikey Garcia
Shawn Porter
Danny Garcia
Keith Thurman

De La Hoya last saw action against Manny Pacquiao in a disastrous showing, losing to the Filipino star by an eighth-round stoppage.

Oscar looked completely ill-prepared for that fight. He obviously didn’t think it through when it came to training for the match-up.

If De La Hoya is going to fight on July 3rd, as he says, he’ll need to drop a lot of weight without draining himself.

Golden Boy Back?

Oscar De La Hoya just said he’s making a return to boxing, July 3 🚨 pic.twitter.com/Nmr2qaLYFN

— DAZN Boxing (@DAZNBoxing) March 26, 2021