Oscar De La Hoya has confirmed that he will be coming out of his 12-year retirement to resume his boxing career at age 47. He says he plans at fighting at 154 to 160 against the top fighters in those divisions.
Unlike the guys that are returning for paydays in exhibition matches, De La Hoya wants to return to the sport for real.
As he said recently, the former six-division world champion De La Hoya (39-6, 30 KOs) doesn’t want to follow in the footsteps of fighters that are just coming back for a payday.
De La Hoya targeting a top guy
But with a net worth estimated at $200 million, De La Hoya doesn’t need money the way that boxers are that fly through their earnings in retirement.
“Any top guy, any top guy out there,” said De La Hoya to ESPN when asked who he wants to face. “The rumors are true, and I’m going to start sparring in the next few weeks.”
Oscar making a comeback after 12 years is hard enough to fathom, but it’s next to impossible to sink one’s teeth around the thought of De La Hoya returning to campaign at 154 or 160.
If he’s serious about wanting to fight the best in those weight classes, then we could, in theory, see De La Hoya fighting some of these guys:
- Gennady Golovkin
- Jermell Charlo
- Erislandy Lara
- Demetrius Andrade
- Jermall Charlo
- Sergiy Derevyanchenko
It’s easy to predict that De La Hoya will choose 38-year-old IBF middleweight champion Golovkin (40-1-1, 35 KOs), seeing that he mentioned wanting to fight him five years ago.
If De La Hoya were to pick Golovkin as his first opponent for his comeback, he would attract a lot of attention from boxing fans, and make a lot of money. Golovkin fights on DAZN, which is non-pay-per-view.
It’s unclear how that would work for De La Hoya to make a mountain full of money if he can’t fight on PPV to take advantage of his popularity in a fight against someone like GGG.
Oscar wants a real fight
“It’s a real fight,” De La Hoya continued in talking about his comeback. “Look, my last fight with Pacquiao, I weighed in at 145, and that was a shell of myself.
“My jab feels faster than ever. I have to make sure that my conditioning is perfect.”
The reason why De La Hoya was a shell of himself against Pacquiao wasn’t because of the weight. It was due to De La Hoya no longer living life as a boxer.
First of all, De La Hoya was no longer fighting frequently by that point in his career. He fought once a year from 2006 to 2008, and then he made the disastrous decision to fight Manny Pacquiao at welterweight in 2008.
As an aging part-time boxer, De La Hoya had no chance of beating Pacquiao, and the weight wasn’t the reason he lost. Even if De La Hoya had fought Pacquiao at 160 back then, he would have failed to him just as bad.
“They forget that you must train hard; you must work hard. So that’s a huge advantage for me because I know what it takes to train hard,” said De La Hoya in pointing out why he has an advantage over younger fighters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGS0XdwIbZ4&t=405s
De La Hoya has been living the soft life of a millionaire for too many years, and he’s not likely to be able to turn back the hands of time to become the fighter that he once was in his early 30s.
When De La Hoya was 42 and talking about wanting to fight GGG, he still looked youthful and like someone that could potentially come out of retirement and give him problems. But right now, De La Hoya is looking older than his chronological age of 47, ad he’s probably too early to fight now. De La Hoya now looking like someone closer to 59 than he does someone nearing their 50s
De La Hoya must pick the biggest money fight he can or his comeback because there’s a good chance this will be a one and done situation.
