Before his promoting days, Oscar De La Hoya was a six-weight champion and, at one stage in his career, boxing’s biggest box office star.
‘The Golden Boy’ topped pound-for-pound lists in his prime and logged notable wins over the likes of Ike Quartey, Julio Cesar Chavez and Pernell Whitaker while coming up short against Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao, Bernard Hopkins, Shane Mosley and Felix Trinidad.
De La Hoya – now heading up Golden Boy Promotions – had a quite incredible 17 successful title defences across five divisions, so has plenty to choose from when it comes to his greatest achievement. Interestingly, he told The Ring Magazine that it came before all of that.
“Nobody can ever take that away. I’ve won many world titles and I’ve fought the very best in the world, but the Olympic gold medal is by far my prize possession. [It’s because of] the pressure I had going into [the Gold Medal fight and I was] doing it for my mother – she had just passed a few months before.”
Cecilia De La Hoya died from breast cancer in late 1990, two years before her son travelled to Barcelona for the Olympic Games. He defeated Germany’s Marco Rudolph – avenging a previous defeat – to take the top prize and fulfil her wish. De La Hoya would turn pro in November that year.
Repeating the sentiment that it’s the most significant achievement of his career, De La Hoya has recently weighed in on the current Olympics boxing controversy surrounding fighter Imane Khelif – a situation that has drawn considerable outrage as well as misinformation on social media.
