Oscar the hero
Reliving a forgotten gem from the last days of De La Hoya
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Heroes & villains
THE LONG READ
These days, it seems like Oscar De La Hoya is in the headlines more for his wild statements than his work in boxing.
After claiming last year that, at the age of 48, he was ready to step in the ring and fight his former protege Canelo Alvarez, turning up to commentate on a Triller card apparently completely off his face, and maintaining feuds with everyone from Dana White to Floyd Mayweather, ‘The Golden Boy’ is rarely out of boxing’s consciousness, often for the wrong reasons. This all followed him apparently “seriously considering” a run at becoming President of the United States of America prior to the 2020 Election.
Just recently, he’s also declared that Golden Boy Promotions - which he launched back in 2002 - is worth a billion dollars, and announced that a ten-figure offer has made him consider making a sale of the company…
The notion that it could be worth a billion dollars in 2022 has been roundly mocked.
GBP still delivers some excellent matchmaking, occasionally the best top-to-bottom cards of any of the major promoters, and has a few decent-sized names under contract - but it is far from the force in boxing it once was in the 2000s and early 2010s, a time when it was putting on many of the biggest events in the sport.
After almost their entire roster of fighters departed in 2015 in the wake of Al Haymon launching Premier Boxing Champions, boxing’s top dog Canelo Alvarez had a messy divorce from Golden Boy which was eventually finalised in late 2020. The likes of Ryan Garcia, Vergil Ortiz Jr. and Gilberto Ramirez remain on board, but GBP is now not even the top promotion on their own broadcast platform, DAZN; for the big-spending streamer, that honour most certainly belongs to Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom.
For Oscar himself, plans were also afoot for ‘The Golden Boy’ to make a 2021 in-ring boxing return, though on a Triller Fight Club event. Scheduled to fight UFC legend Vitor Belfort in September, the return was later scrapped - whether through a lower-than-anticipated amount of interest or the fact that Oscar caught Covid-19 - and the entire show was moved from California to Florida, with De La Hoya replaced by Evander Holyfield. The Holyfiled-Belfort bout, and the event as a whole, was a dumpster fire - as I covered in detail last year.
It might surprise some younger fans, therefore, to know though that Oscar De La Hoya, the fighter, goes down as an undoubted all-time great. He was maligned in some quarters, as fighters of his standing invariably are, but after striking gold at the 1992 Olympics, he had an outstanding pro career - prepared to face anyone, becoming a world champion in six weight classes, and establishing himself one of the sport’s biggest draws of all time, especially on pay-per-view.
Oscar, the fighter, was absolutely legit.
Flashback to the start of 2006, and the then-33-year-old De La Hoya had been a professional for more than 13 years.
In his most recent bout, a September 2004 showdown with future business partner Bernard Hopkins for the undisputed WBC, WBA, WBO and IBF middleweight titles, Oscar was attempting to establishing himself as the man in another weight class. Putting forth a strong display, De La Hoya was very much in the fight going into the ninth round.
That stanza did not end well for ‘The Golden Boy’. A crunching left hook body shot from ‘The Executioner’ midway through the round resulted in Oscar crumbling to the ground pretty much instantly. He didn’t even attempt to beat the count. Though he had occasionally lost some of his biggest fights prior to this night, it was the first time that De La Hoya had been stopped in his career.
Middleweight seemed a division too far for ‘The Golden Boy’.
There were many, myself included, who actually thought that De La Hoya had lost his previous fight as well, a highly contentious decision over then-little known Felix Sturm just a few months earlier for the German’s WBO 160-pound world crown.
With the megafight looming with fellow superstar Hopkins, it was difficult not to feel like something fishy was going on when the cards were read out on June 5th, 2004; that the huge amount of cash on offer for the DLH-Hopkins undisputed showdown had somehow swayed the process and the rightful winner had not received their due.
I’m not really one for conspiracy theories, but I still struggle to see any other result but a Felix Sturm win to this day. At the very least, when you watch that fight back, you have to say that ‘The Golden Boy’ got a charitable decision. Sturm and his team lodged an official complaint after rightly concluding that their man was given the short end of the stick, but this - perhaps not unsurprisingly - didn’t go anywhere much.
While his promotional company began to become a major player, Oscar’s boxing career was in a state of disrepair. The shine of ‘The Golden Boy’ appeared to be wearing off.
Rumours swirled that De La Hoya might well retire after the Hopkins loss. Though he himself denied it, not fighting for the entire calendar year of 2005 seemed to potentially corroborate that theory. While Golden Boy Promotions, under the stewardship of Oscar and Richard Shaefer, delivered a number of major events across the next twelve months on both regular HBO and pay-per-view, by early 2006 - when it became clear that he would indeed fight on - many unanswered questions remained about the in-ring future of ‘The Golden Boy’.
What team De La Hoya needed was a total, gold-plated villain.
Enter Ricardo Mayorga.
Chain-smoking, hard-drinking and perpetually offensive, Mayorga had made a career out of being tough as nails and kicking off with pretty much everyone. Born in Nicaragua and growing up in abject poverty, Mayorga spent years fighting on the small-time circuits of his homeland and neighbouring Costa Rica before his wild style in and out of the ring eventually caught the attention of American promoters.
Mayorga caused a massive upset when he blitzed Vernon Forrest - then considered one of the elite fighters in the sport after beating Shane Mosley handily not once but twice - in just three rounds to grab the WBC welterweight title in early 2003.
Perhaps even more shockingly, Mayorga won the rematch on points. Though he had later suffered losses to Cory Spinks and Felix Trinidad, the attention-grabbing bad guy aesthetic of ‘El Matador’ kept him relevant and in contention for the big fights.
Mayorga, the archetypal boxing bad guy, was the perfect opponent to allow De La Hoya the opportunity to become the hero again.
By 2006, Mayorga also happened to be the WBC junior middleweight champion, a division in which Oscar had much more history in and would likely be far more comfortable at this stage of his career.
From the moment the fight was confirmed, Mayorga went for the jugular. Accusing De La Hoya of throwing the Hopkins bout, waxing lyrical about how he would be making Oscar his “bitch”, stating that he was a “fake”, “quitter” and much worse, aiming derogatory words and gestures towards his challenger’s family members…he even threatened to pull out of the fight just days prior unless his purse was increased by the Nicaraguan’s promoter Don King.
This was ‘vintage’ Mayorga, if such a thing existed, and it left no doubt on who would be the good guy once the fight finally arrived on May 6th, 2006.
Perhaps this was what De La Hoya needed, maybe ‘The Golden Boy’ had been getting too comfortable in his minted position and needed a new fire to be lit under him. Whatever the implications, Oscar proved that he was not finished this night, in a performance which veered from very good to brilliant across six dazzling rounds. Mayorga, who could definitely fight but was limited in his all-round boxing game, had literally no answer.
De La Hoya sent Mayorga crashing to the canvas in the very first round, and the Nicaraguan boozer never really came that close to recovering from that. Showing deft defence, impressive speed and vicious aggression which had been lacking at times in his most recent performances, Oscar unloaded a wicked combination of punches in round six which again saw Mayorga take a knee in a desperate attempt to survive. Once De La Hoya continued with another rapid-fire assault when the action resumed, the bout was called off moments later to jubilant scenes in the MGM Grand.
‘The Golden Boy’ was absolutely in his pomp once again before a rabid Vegas crowd. The fact that the fight drew over 875,000 buys on HBO PPV ably demonstrated that, far from being done, Oscar was still a supreme force on the business side of the fight game as well.
De La Hoya, reinvigorated and reestablish at the top table, went on to superfights against Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao - two boxers who would replace him as boxing’s biggest money-spinners for the next decade - across the next two years. They would end up both being changing of the guard fights, but in very different ways, as the sport’s new era beckoned.
‘The Golden Boy’ ran the younger Mayweather close in May 2007, despite being a considerable betting underdog prior to the fight. Oscar ended up dropping a split decision to the then-’Pretty Boy’, which he disputes to this day. Demonstrating De La Hoya’s drawing power, and the potential of Mayweather to even exceed him in the future, the event drew an enormous, record-breaking 2.4 million pay-per-view buys. That record would only be exceeded almost a decade later when Floyd and Manny finally went at it, years too late.
De La Hoya’s meeting with Pacquiao, which took place in late 2008, ended up being the archetypal passing of the torch bout - the former’s final contest and the cementing of the latter as a genuine worldwide boxing superstar.
Many saw Oscar as the favourite before the fight, with Pacquiao moving up two weight classes and De La Hoya going down one to make the fight possible. Manny and his trainer Freddie Roach remained confident as the showdown drew near that De La Hoya was too far over the hill. Once again, a sell-out crowd was on hand at the MGM Grand to find out if that was the case.
As it transpired, Pacquiao and Roach’s feelings were not misplaced; similar to the way ‘The Golden Boy’ had claimed the scalp of the legendary Julio Cesar Chavez in the ‘90s, this was right place, right time for the younger, hungry ‘PacMan’.
De La Hoya seemed every inch the shot fighter attempting to recapture former glories. Back down at welterweight and looking drained and uneasy, Oscar was summarily dominated by a blistering Pacquiao throughout their meeting. By the eighth round, ‘The Golden Boy’s’ corner had seen enough and mercifully ended the beatdown. Even though this was not for a title, the prize of claiming the name of Oscar De La Hoya was a considerable one in Manny’s journey.
After the fight, De La Hoya told Roach "you're right Freddie, I don't have it anymore", while his cornerman Nacho Beristain concluded that "I stopped the fight because I didn't want him to leave his greatness in the ring”.
When the two fighters came into contact moments after the end of the bout, Pacquaio told Oscar “you’re still my hero”.
Despite veering close to a return recently, this thankfully remains the last time ‘The Golden Boy’ has entered a professional boxing ring.
In the end, though he recorded a win against Steve Forbes prior to the Pacquiao humbling, that victory against Ricardo Mayorga was the last major night of glory in Oscar De La Hoya’s fantastic in-ring career.
For that, he owed a debt of gratitude to Mayorga as well. Boxing is about the individual, the loneliest sport of them all, but it’s also about the opponent. We have seen countless times just how important finding a good foil can be for creating truly lasting memories in the ring. ‘The Golden Boy’ shutting up the big-mouthed protagonist, after an uncertain period in his career, could not have come at a more opportune time and set him up for the enormous fights which characterised the end of his run at the top of boxing.
If more of today’s top fighters were as open to taking on challenges as Oscar De La Hoya was, then the sport would be better for it. Whisper it, but boxing could do with more unabashed bad guys like Ricardo Mayorga as well.
The showdowns with Mayweather and Pacquiao were undoubtedly more high-profile events, with a longer-lasting impact on boxing as a whole, but the Mayorga fight is an oft-forgotten last hurrah of De La Hoya’s glory days.
AJ leaves Sky for DAZN
After murmurings for the last week or so that an announcement was imminent, it was officially confirmed on Monday that Anthony Joshua would be leaving Sky Sports in the UK, having agreed an expanded and long-term deal with DAZN to exclusively fight worldwide on the network. Reports indicate it could be worth up to $100 million per year, with two fights annually, in addition to Joshua becoming a “shareholder, special advisor, and brand ambassador for the (DAZN) business”. Following the lead of his promoter Matchroom, who went all-in with DAZN when they left Sky Sports in the UK last year, this streamlines one of boxing’s few legitimate superstars to appearing on one platform, in all likelihood for the rest of his career.
For Joshua, it’s not difficult to see the allure of the offer - there is obviously the money, which in itself is pretty mind-blowing, along with the full-scale alignment with promoter Eddie Hearn and Matchroom now being across the world on a single broadcaster. Moreover, however, the opportunity to become a shareholder in and advisor for DAZN, with a position on their advisory board, signposts how he and his team have an angle on his long-term future. There are risks, of course, having now lost the Sky Sports promotional machine which has served him so well across his career so far, but the amounts of money and influence involved are bonuses Sky would never have competed with.
For DAZN, although this does seem like a staggering amount of money and positioning to give away, the reality is that they probably didn’t have many options left. After losing out on the purchase of BT Sport, as well as the rights for UFC coverage in the UK, along with the purse bid for Tyson Fury vs Dillian Whyte, they needed some more positive news. Especially when journalists continue to detail the sheer scale of the losses the sports streamer is incurring as it attempts to establish a sustainable foothold in the market.
It might sound slightly counterintuitive to spend even more money, but with DAZN struggling to make inroads in key markets in other sports, there is a logic to doubling down on boxing. Though Matchroom’s first year being exclusive on DAZN has featured some exciting action, their UK shows especially have sometimes gone a bit under the radar to the mainstream audience. AJ’s name value - whether the anti-Joshua brigade likes it or not - sprinkles more of that stardust on the DAZN schedule, with the opportunity to establish new headline, or even PPV, stars from their roster underneath.
They needed AJ, seemingly at whatever cost it might incur to financial backer (and, as of this sentence, 40th richest person in the world) Len Blavatnik’s bank balance. Joshua has a uniquely marketable draw in the sport, especially in Europe, one which perhaps can only be compared to the current DAZN superstar Canelo Alvarez in North America.
Or maybe that should be AJ has had a unique draw in the sport. With the imminent rematch against Oleksandr Usyk - which will presumably launch DAZN’s pay-per-view operation in the UK - on the verge of being announced for later this summer, with a new trainer in tow, Joshua is entering a period of uncertainty. Another loss against the Ukrainian unified world heavyweight champion, especially a more conclusive defeat, would potentially damage his brand as a fighter considerably. With the amount of money on the table for the DAZN deal, there are certainly high stakes at play for all parties. It’s also a tad strange that we still don’t have an announcement on the Usyk fight, but I guess that will come in due course.
Funnily enough, Tyson Fury confirmed just a day later - strange coincidence that one, for sure - that he in fact would be un-retiring, less than two months after retiring, and will return to boxing. Clearly, the winner of Usyk-Joshua II is the only opponent he should be considering, but this is boxing so who knows where things will end up over the next year. After holding on for AJ and Fury last year only to be dashed at the last - which admittedly led to Tyson’s shockingly great Deontay Wilder III win - I’m taking nothing for granted any more in the heavyweight division.
THE NEXT ROUND
A far-from-exhaustive rundown of upcoming highlights of the boxing calendar…
17th June 2022
Nathan Gorman vs Tomas Salek
Promoter: Wasserman | TV: Channel 5 (UK)
"I know the move...the move is coming". Those were the words of Kalle Sauerland twelve months ago when announcing that he and brother Nisse had sold a controlling stake of their family business, the long-standing European promotion Team Sauerland, to the powerful Wasserman agency to create a new entity - Wasserman Boxing. “What it means is it gives us an opportunity to massively attack the market”, said Kalle, “certainly we’ll be the most well-funded outfit in boxing”. Although this is boxing, so hyperbole should be expected as standard, these were still some bold claims, with Kalle stating that Wasserman Boxing should be judged six months on.
At the time, I theorised that Wasserman would have an eye on becoming the new lead promoter for Sky Sports, a position left empty when Matchroom moved lock, stock and barrel to DAZN. That honour ended up going to Ben Shalom’s upstart BOXXER promotion, and Wasserman has had to make do with occasional co-promotional credits on Sky, mainly involving their star UK name Chris Eubank Jr. Their other notable clients, such as Filip Hrgovic and Maris Breidis, have either boxed on other promoters’ shows or stagnated somewhat. They have continued to sign a mixture of established and young fighters, but without much of a platform of their own on which they can appear.
The announcement of a deal with Channel 5 was Wasserman’s first major broadcasting move. A terrestrial TV platform which does give them potentially the largest audience given they will be fighting on a free-to-air channel in the UK, but it’s clear that this will be more of a nice-to-have than a complete game-changer. Their first show on 5 had an exciting British middleweight title scrap between Denzel Bentley and Linus Udofia, but aside from that, it felt quite similar to the previous Hennessy Sports boxing events on the channel - same on-air talent, same b-level production values, and use of a smaller hall (the IndigO2 in the 02 Arena) which just does not really work for boxing. It’s early days, of course, and without any other obvious options this was a step forward for Wasserman and a platform for their fighters, but it didn’t feel like the difference-maker which had been promised a year prior.
Wasserman’s shows so far have offered examples to support the argument that perhaps British boxing is becoming too fragmented; the glut of major promotions jockying for position and delivering TV cards is putting pressure on the pool of fighters available to fill them. This show is a case in point, with some names and prospects sprinkled across it and one standout fight (a British super flyweight title eliminator between Marcel Braithwaite and Thomas Essomba) which was sadly pulled from the card last minute due to injury. Josh Kelly makes his return, after the bizarre eleventh-hour aborting of his appearance on the last Wasserman Channel 5 show, and reality TV star Aaron Chalmers - Geordie Shore cast member and MMA fighter - makes his pro boxing debut in a celeb boxing crossover.
The headliner is British heavyweight Nathan Gorman against Tomas Salek, a Czech heavyweight who lost in three rounds to Kash Ali last year and isn’t ranked in the top 100 of the division on BoxRec. Make of that what you will.
With the promise of three more fight nights to come on Channel 5 this year, let’s hope this is a big success for Wasserman and they are able to build stars on the platform. More boxing on terrestrial TV should only be a good thing for exposure of the sport in Britain, with a chance for the Sauerland’s less-known talent to theoretically build some name value.
As things stand currently, however, this doesn’t really feel like they are “massively attacking the market”.
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18th June 2022
Artur Beterbiev vs Joe Smith Jr.
Promoter: Top Rank | TV: ESPN (US); Sky Sports (UK)
Boxing in 2022 seems to have suddenly become able to deliver a glut of unification and undisputed world title fights across a number of divisions. Although I prefer to not pay too much heed to the belts, given how untrustworthy the sanctioning bodies who bestow them invariably are, it does at least demonstrate that the sport is matching up more of the best fighters in each weight class than it has managed in recent years. As boxing fans, this is as much as we can really expect in this fractured business.
To continue that trend, this weekend sees three of the four light heavyweight titles contested when Artur Beterbiev (the WBC and IBF champion) faces Joe Smith Jr. (the WBO titlist) in a major fight for the 175-pounders.
I can’t see this one being anything but an absolute, bombs away banger. Smith tends to fire in his shots from a distance with his long reach, so we might not - at least initially - see a phonebox punch up, but both men carry considerable, fight-changing power, especially Beterbiev, who is amongst the heaviest hitters in the entire sport.
It would be a shock if the likeable ‘Common Man’ Smith Jr. - who in fact I had losing to Maxim Vlasov last year when he captured the WBO crown - was able to pull off the win here, a fact which is reflected in the slightly unfair 1/12 odds on bookmakers currently have for a Beterbiev victory by any means.
Unless he has begun to regress significantly at the age of 37, you’d have to favour Artur to be just the second man to stop Smith Jr., perhaps late in the bout, but the American is a much more live underdog than the odds suggest. Whatever the result though, this seems almost guaranteed to deliver action. Though he holds the unique distinction of being a world champion who has won every one of his pro fights by stoppage, the fearsome Beterbiev has been knocked down before - notably against Britain’s Callum Johnson, who was still stopped within four rounds - and is open to being hit. Smith can certainly hit. At the very least that will make this one a spectacle, for however long it lasts.
The betting odds also don’t always necessarily reflect how exciting a prospect a match-up is, which is the case here, and the fact that it is being held in the cauldron-like Hulu Theatre in Madison Square Garden, New York should mean a fiery atmosphere is on tap as well, where Long Island native Smith Jr. will have the lions’ share of the support. Beterbiev remains a major challenge for anyone of course.
The obvious fight to make for the winner of this would be against WBA light heavy champ, and recent Canelo-conquerer, Dmitry Bivol, to decide the division’s undisputed number one. For years, the match-up I have most wanted to see in the sport - possibly excluding Terence Crawford vs Errol Spence - has been Beterbiev-Bivol, but who knows if we will ever actually see it. Smith Jr. and Bivol fought before, in 2019, with the Russian almost completely dominating from start to finish.
As usual, Top Rank does an excellent job of setting the scene for the bout with their Blood, Sweat and Tears two-parter, telling the story of the divergent paths both fighters have taken to arrive at their showdown on Saturday night…