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OSCAR DE LA HOYA

LAS VEGAS. — The Golden Boy has his shine back. He has beaten the booze and he is fighting again. He tells about the time, the day after winning the only gold medal for the American boxing team at the 1992 Olympic Games, he was pulled out of bed to sit next to swimmer Janet Evans and talk about the success of the US athletes in Barcelona.

Little did the officials know the 19-year-old Oscar De La Hoya got so drunk the night before while celebrating his win that his family had to carry him back to his room.

He sat, wearing sunglasses, in front of a room full of journalists, so hung over that he couldn’t stay awake long enough to answer the simplest of questions.

“I’m sitting at this little table and Janet Evans is next to me with I don’t know how many golds,” says De La Hoya. “I just fall asleep. They’re asking me questions and I don’t know what is happening. I just kept hearing “Oscar, Oscar’.”

The drinking didn’t stop even as he became the Golden Boy and embarked on a professional career in which he earned, by his own estimates, US$300 million.

When it finally ended in December 2008 with a beating at the hands of Manny Pacquiao, De La Hoya’s toughest opponent hadn’t changed.

The bottle remained unbeaten.

“When I fought Pacquiao, two weeks before the fight I was plastered out of my mind,” says De La Hoya.

Boxing history is littered with tales of fighters and addiction problems. Most don’t end well, though Sugar Ray Leonard and Julio Cesar Chavez overcame the odds to tell their tales of alcohol abuse and drug problems.

De La Hoya wants to tell his story, too. At 41, he finally seems comfortable with himself after a three-month stint in a Malibu rehabilitation centre where he wasn’t even allowed to see his wife and six children.

He says he’s finally overcome his demons. It feels good to talk about them because he believes they’re gone for good.

He’s back fighting, this time in the boardroom instead of the ring. At stake in the battle with his former CEO Richard Schaefer is control of his company, Golden Boy Promotions. De La Hoya makes it clear that he’s in this fight to win.

More importantly, though, he says he’s taken control of his life after being lost for years.

“I finally feel free. I finally feel at peace for the very first time in my life,” he says during an hour-long interview at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. De La Hoya is there to promote the fight between Mexican superstar Canelo Alvarez and Erislandy Lara.

He calls it “maybe the biggest weekend of my life” because this promotion is his alone.

Before his latest rehab, De La Hoya says, he was content to let Schaefer and others run the company while he tried to enjoy himself.

“I didn’t want the responsibility,” he said. “I’m the Golden Boy. I was supposed to have everything.”

That it has taken two rehabs to get to where he is now isn’t lost on De La Hoya, who takes credit for launching the careers of some of his opponents, most notably Floyd Mayweather, into big pay-per-view successes.

De La Hoya was, for years, the biggest draw card in boxing of anyone not named Mike Tyson, and he says his fights grossed US$700 million on pay-per-view sales alone.

He’s still got the money because he was smart about that. He took some advice given to him as boy when his dad took him to a gym in East Los Angeles to get some tutoring from former lightweight champion Ike Williams.

“My dad thought he was going to teach me how to throw a left hook or something,” De La Hoya said. “But he said “The only advice I’m going to give you is to keep your money.” That always stuck with me.”

While De La Hoya has stashed some of his money safely away, he’s also invested well.

He owns a high-rise in Los Angeles, has a piece of the Houston Dynamo soccer club and is the majority shareholder in Golden Boy Promotions, which he called “the best investment of any of them.”

When he drives in downtown Los Angeles he can always go check out his statue in front of Staples Centre. The kid from East LA grew up to win titles in six weight classes and was inducted in the International Boxing Hall of Fame last month.

“This is my passion. This is what keeps me alive,” he said. “Boxing literally gave me a life as a kid, promoting gave me another life.”
He credits his wife, singer Millie Corretjer, for sticking with him through drunken and sometimes embarrassing times.

“I was there being the Golden Boy but I was emotionally disconnected,” he said. “I’ve been disconnected emotionally ever since I was a teenager.”

Now he is back in spotlight. De La Hoya says thinks Alvarez has a chance to become the richest fighter ever if he keeps improving.
The red-haired Mexican, whose only loss was last year to Mayweather, is just 23 and is headlining his second pay-per-view show.

De La Hoya’s falling out with Schaefer, who left the company last month, remains to be settled, but De La Hoya says he’s moving forward. He’s reconciled with former promoter Bob Arum and is eager to make big fights with his rival company. Not that it will be easy.

There are plenty of enemies out there in boxing, even if you are the Golden Boy. “There are people who don’t like it and I understand why,” says De La Hoya. “But the sleeping giant has woken up.” — AFP.