A LOOK AT OSCAR DE LA HOYA

            Beyond the power and the reflexes, the footwork and the hand speed, the ultimate key to greatness for a fighter is his resolve. He may strengthen his legs, hone his fists and gear his mind for the battles ahead. But if, at his core, he doesn’t have a big enough heart to inspire and motivate him in the face of adversity, none of the rest will matter.
            For Oscar De La Hoya, the first big test of his resolve came in the isolation of a hotel room in Sydney, Australia in 1991.
            Had he not passed that test, all that followed – Olympic gold, ten professional titles, championships in six weight divisions, the greatest pay-per-view numbers in boxing history – might not have happened.
            De La Hoya, in pursuit of the Olympic gold he had promised his mother, Cecilia, before she died of breast cancer, had become one of the top amateurs in the world.
            He had come to Sydney to compete in the world championships. For De La Hoya, however, he barely had time to work up a sweat before the competition ended. He lost in his first match to a German named Marco Rudolph.
            Crushed by the defeat, De La Hoya, forced to remain in Sydney for two weeks while his U.S. teammates continued on, disappeared into his hotel room and refused to emerge.
            With the embarrassment of the setback hanging over him like a dark cloud, he wouldn’t budge, not even when his coach, Pat Nappi, came calling, yelling and screaming for De La Hoya to snap out of it.
            Would his promise to his mother prove to be nothing but empty words? Was he not as good as he had thought he was?
Was it all over before it had even begun?
            It could have been if De La Hoya had allowed himself to become immersed in a defeatist attitude.
            Instead, he eventually emerged from that room with a hardened resolve, a determination to succeed that he would carry with him for the next two decades, through a career in which he would come face-to-face with adversity again and again.
            De La Hoya went on to make the U.S. Olympic team a year later, and advanced all the way to the gold-medal finals in Barcelona in the lightweight division where he faced – fittingly enough – his old nemesis, Rudolph.
            Revenge was sweet. De La Hoya shook off the doubts and despair of a year earlier with a solid 7-2 victory over Rudolph, including a final-round knockdown, to win the gold.
            He had concluded his amateur career with a record of 223-5 with 163 knockouts.
            When he returned home to East Los Angeles, De La Hoya briefly left the cheering crowds to bring his medal to his mother’s gravesite, to show her the tangible proof of a promise made good.
            While all his focus had previously been on winning that precious medal, De La Hoya, soaking in the deafening adulation surrounding him after Barcelona, decided to expand his horizons, decided to follow the path of his grandfather, Vicente, and his father, Joel, into professional boxing.
            It was a path the young De La Hoya took to heights never imagined outside the heavyweight division.
            His professional career began just over three months after Barcelona, in front of over 6,000 people at the Great Western Forum in Inglewood. In his debut, De La Hoya faced Lamar Williams, a seemingly grizzled veteran at 24 compared to the 19-year-old, baby-faced De La Hoya.
            The Olympic star shook off the nervousness, shrugged off Williams’ 5-1-1 record and promptly sent him to the canvas three times in the first round, the third knockdown ending the fight.
            The Golden Boy had arrived.
            After winning his first 11 fights in his first year as a pro, De La Hoya got his initial title shot in March of 1994. It was the World Boxing Organization’s 130-pound title. The opponent was undefeated Jimmi Bredahl (16-0) and the site was the Olympic Auditorium where both De La Hoya’s father and grandfather had fought.
            De La Hoya won on a 10th-round TKO to begin his climb up the championship weight ladder, picking up enough belts along the way to outfit a clothing store.
            Over the following decade, De La Hoya:

• moved up to 135 pounds and beat Jorge Paez on a second-round knockout to capture the WBO lightweight crown.
• advanced to 140 pounds and TKOed Mexican legend Julio Cesar Chavez to win the World Boxing Council light welterweight championship.
• took on Pernell Whitaker at 147 pounds for the

WBC welterweight title, winning on a unanimous decision.

• came up to 154 pounds and fought Javier Castillejo

for the WBC light middleweight championship, winning on a unanimous decision.

• fought Felix Sturm at 160 pounds and won a unanimous decision to become the WBO middleweight champion.

            While it was a steady climb, it was not always a smooth and carefree ascent for De La Hoya.
            With speed, agility, poise, ring sense and a devastating left hook, he was able to pile up victories without subjecting himself to a great deal of punishment from his opponents. De La Hoya landed many, many more blows than he received. That enabled him to maintain his movie-star good looks, but resulted in derision from some fans, many of them in the Mexican-American community, who wanted their champions to look like they had been in bruising brawls, to bear the scars of ring war.
            That criticism of De La Hoya was never more stinging than in his two fights against Chavez. In twice dominating his boyhood hero, considered Mexico’s greatest fighter, De La Hoya found himself in the crosshairs of enraged fans who couldn’t bear to watch the fall of a legend.
            While it took time for those fans to grudgingly accept the rise of a new star, De La Hoya had no trouble cultivating his own legions of loyalists. He soon became a fighter with unprecedented crossover appeal among Latinos and Anglos, the diehards and the casual boxing fans, male and female. The distinctions blurred when it came to De La Hoya.
            Especially in the case of gender.
            There had never before been a fighter so appealing to women. They mobbed his press conferences, purchased his pay-per-view bouts, filled his venues and generally treated him like a rock star.
            That enabled De La Hoya to pile up record pay-per-view numbers and live gates. His fight against Felix Trinidad in 1999 was the richest ever to that point outside the heavyweight division. His 2007 match against Floyd Mayweather Jr. generated 2.4 million buys, the largest pay-per-view total in boxing history.
            When it came to mass appeal, it was De La Hoya, not Mike Tyson, or Lennox Lewis, who proved to be the real heavyweight.
            De La Hoya’s success at generating revenue streams was not always matched by success in the ring. He lost a controversial majority decision to Trinidad, was twice defeated by boyhood rival Shane Mosley and, as advancing age diminished his skills, was beaten by high-profile opponents Bernard Hopkins, Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao.
            His record is 39-6 with 30 knockouts.
            But unlike so many fighters who wind up with nothing to show for their glory years but a damaged body and a depleted bank account, De La Hoya had begun preparing for life after boxing years ago.
            Working with his business partner, Richard Schaefer, De La Hoya formed Golden Boy Promotions, which has grown into the most successful promotional organization in boxing.
            De La Hoya’s ever expanding business empire includes real-estate holdings, Ring Magazine, Spanish-language newspapers, the Houston Dynamo soccer team, a movie company, an equity ownership in Equal, the sugar substitute, and various other enterprises.
            De La Hoya has also devoted much of his time to giving back to the community that spawned him via the Oscar De La Hoya Foundation. That, in turn, has led to the Oscar De La Hoya Animo Charter High School, the Oscar De La Hoya Boxing Gym and Technology Center, the Cecilia Gonzales De La Hoya Cancer Center, the Oscar De La Hoya Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit and the Oscar De La Hoya Labor and Delivery Center, the medical facilities located at White Memorial Hospital in East Los Angeles.
            De La Hoya has found contentment in his personal life as well. He is married to the former Millie Corretjer, a popular Puerto Rican singer, and finds great joy in spending time with his children.
            De La Hoya even managed to fulfill a desire to emulate his mother, who loved to sing. In 2000, he recorded an album and was nominated for a Latin Grammy.
            He’s come a long way from the humble East L.A. household in which he grew up. De La Hoya still carries a food stamp in his wallet to remind himself how far he has come.
            And in front of Staples Center stands a statue of De La Hoya to remind others in his community how far they can go.

DID YOU KNOW. . .

• that Oscar de la Hoya first put boxing gloves on at the age of four.

• that at the age of 12, he found an Olympic poster and signed it Oscar de la Hoya, ’92 Olympic Gold. That was seven years before it became reality.

• that he was once mugged at gunpoint in his own East L.A. neighborhood as a teen-ager, but that the robbers returned his stolen jacket, wallet and camera when they found out who he was.

•  that, as a teen-ager, De La Hoya dreamed of being an architect.

• that he first got into the ring with Julio Cesar Chavez at the age of 17. Chavez, preparing for a fight, invited the hot young prospect to spar with him in a makeshift ring above a restaurant.

• that he first suffered damage to his left hand, an injury that would plague him through much of his career, in his eighth fight, a 1993 match against Troy Dorsey. The punch that ended the fight started the problems.

• that he would look upward during pre-fight instructions not to avoid the gaze of his opponent, but to see the image of his mother he imagined above him, protecting him.

• that from his back yard in San Juan, Puerto Rico, looking across a ravine, De La Hoya can see the house of his old rival, Felix Trinidad.

• that his fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. was seen in 187 countries.

• that when De La Hoya was unable to conjure up the proper emotion in a recording studio for a song on his album, his producer, Rudy Perez, showed him a photo of a Puerto Rican singer. That generated feelings De La Hoya carries to this day. He wound up marrying the woman, Millie Corretjer.