For De La Hoya, the fight, held at The MGM Grand in Las Vegas, was supposed to be a high-level “warm up” for an assault on world middleweight king Bernard Hopkins’ belts (B-Hop defeated Robert Allen on the same card that June night in 2004), but the fight turned out to be much more than that.
Challenging the 20-0 German for the WBO belt, De La Hoya came in looking overweight and sluggish and he came within a whisker of paying the price and blowing the Hopkins mega-match. Sturm may have been unknown, but he had behind him a superb amateur career and he unveiled his skills against the 36-3 superstar who, at age 31 was six years his senior. Sturm boxed behind his superb left jab, out-punched De La Hoya, marked him up around the eye and generally appeared to boss the fight.
The list of the next great fighters (and writers, promoters, photographers, etc) set to enter The Hall of Fame has been announced. To the dismay of absolutely nobody, ring greats Oscar De La Hoya, Felix Trinidad and Joe Calzaghe head the newest inductees.
The International Boxing Hall of Fame and Museum announced today the newest class of inductees to enter the Hall. Living inductees include two division champion “The Pride of Wales” Joe Calzaghe, six division world champion “The Golden Boy” Oscar De La Hoya and three division champion Felix “Tito” Trinidad in the Modern category; promoter Barry Hearn, referee Richard Steele, journalist Graham Houston and photographer Neil Leifer. 
Floyd “Money” Mayweather Jr put to rest any belief in Oscar De la Hoya’s so called blueprint designed to beat him. The 36 year old Mayweather appears to be like a fine wine, getting better with age as he dominated Saul “Canelo” Alvarez on Saturday night. 
Oscar De La Hoya has stolen the lime light from Floyd Mayweather and Saul Alvarez for a moment by going public with his personal demons and choosing a climatic stage of the hype to “drop his bomb”. What kind of an emergency could not wait for several days and prevented him from attending an event of such magnitude? Has he become so dysfunctional that he has to be removed from the scene as a liability to the joint venture? Was there an “intervention”?
It’s always both very interesting and a great honour being a call in participant whenever a big fight is preceded by a teleconference; especially an international one ahead of a massive, massive fight such as the fast approaching Floyd Mayweather-Saul Canelo Alvarez clash. Yesterday, with big name scribes such as Dan Rafael and Lem Satterfield asking Canelo and Oscar De La Hoya questions regarding “The One,” it was hugely exciting being on the line.
(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) Without a knockdown and some very generous scoring for his last fight, WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-0-1, 30 KO’s) would have ended up losing his last fight to Austin Trout last April in San Antonio, Texas in their open scoring fight. As it was, Canelo won a fight that looked to be more of a draw than a victory in the minds of a lot boxing fans. 
Oscar De La Hoya thinks Floyd Mayweather Jr. is the same fighter now that he was when they fought in 2007. De La Hoya believes Mayweather is still essentially as good as he was back then, but the difference now is he’s fighting who De La Hoya feels is a better fighter than himself in Saul “Canelo” Alvarez on September 14th.