Oscar De La Hoya is often regarded as being one of the greatest fighters of the last two decades.
Throughout his exceptional professional career, ‘The Golden Boy’ won world titles across six weight divisions including the lineal world championship in three of those weight classes.
The majority of his success came during the mid-to-late 90’s where he defeated the likes of Ike Quartey, Julio Cesar Chavez Sr and the late-great Hector Camacho. His first career defeat did not come until 1999 when he was dethroned of his WBC welterweight title by Felix Trinidad.
After coming up against an abundance of generational greats during his tenure, including Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. ‘The Golden Boy’ recently named the one opponent who actually gave him a tougher test than ‘Money’ Mayweather and it wasn’t ‘PacMan’.
Speaking on Hotboxin’ with Mike Tyson, De La Hoya named four-weight world champion Pernell Whitaker as the only fighter to have given him a tougher test than Mayweather.
“Pernell was a slippery motherf—-r, at one time, and I was a big welterweight right and so Pernell, at one point I was like [throwing heavy shots] and he was looking at me like [dodging punches] and I missed every punch, he was a son of a b—h. he was good.”
Whitaker captured the undisputed lightweight championship with a victory over Juan Nazario in 1990 and would make several successful defences of his crown before moving up to light-welterweight, where he won the IBF title against Rafael Pineda in 1992, followed by the WBC welterweight title from Buddy McGirt just one year later.
‘Sweet Pea’ lost his WBC crown at 147lbs against De La Hoya when they clashed in 1997. Whitaker would go on the taste defeat in two of the final three outings of his career against Carlos Bojorquez and Felix Trinidad. He tragically passed away in 2019 at the age of 55.
