Oscar poses after training at the Resurrection Gym in East Los Angeles. He would later purchase the gym and turn it into the Oscar De La Hoya Youth Center. (Photo courtesy of the author)
Oscar, center, is honored as the winner of his division at the Olympic Trials. (Photo courtesy of the author)
A golden moment: Oscar poses with his gold medal at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. (Photo courtesy of the author)
One picture of Oscar’s first photo shoot as an Olympic gold medal winner. (Photo courtesy of the author)
Oscar poses with two Joel De La Hoyas, Sr. and Jr. (Photo courtesy of the author)
Oscar poses with one of the uncles who saw him grow into a gold medal winner, Vicente De La Hoya. (Photo courtesy of the author)
May 27, 1994: Champion Oscar De La Hoya puts the finishing touches on challenger Giorgio Campanella. (Credit: Holly Stein/Allsport)
May 6, 1995: Oscar De La Hoya, left, delivers the decisive left to Rafael Ruelas, knocking him down for the second time in the second round. (Photo by Getty Images)
Las Vegas: Oscar De La Hoya, left, lands a left against WBC Super Lightweight Champion Julio César Chávez, right, in the third round. De La Hoya defeated Chávez to claim the title with a fourth-round TKO. (John Gurzinski/AFP/Getty Images)
WBC Welterweight Champion Oscar De La Hoya celebrates his win after a unanimous twelve-round decision over Hector Camacho on September 13, 1997, at the Thomas and Mack Arena in Las Vegas. (John Gurzinski/AFP/Getty Images)
De La Hoya celebrates his win over Wilfredo Rivera of Puerto Rico. (Tom Mihalek/AFP/Getty Images)
Oscar De La Hoya of the U.S. goes down in the sixth round during his fight against challenger Ike Quartey from Ghana, right, in Las Vegas. De La Hoya won a split decision victory over his challenger, keeping his World Boxing Council welterweight crown. (Hector Mata/AFP/Getty Images)
De La Hoya, right, and Félix Trinidad battle it out at the Mandalay Hotel, September 18, 1999, for the WBC/IBF Welterweight Championship. Trinidad won the twelve-round fight on points. (Photo by Gary M. Williams/Liaison)
Sugar Shane Mosley lands an uppercut to De La Hoya during the World Welterweight Fight at Staples Center on June 17, 2000. Mosley won by decision in the twelfth round. (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)
De La Hoya displays his new CD titled Oscar De La Hoya, October 14, 2000, during an album signing event at Tower Records in West Hollywood. (Photo by Frederick M. Brown/ Newsmakers)
Oscar entertains two of his young fans at a signing event for his CD. (Photo courtesy of the author)
De La Hoya smiles in front of a GQ logo backdrop at the Fifth Annual GQ Magazine Men of the Year Awards, held at the Beacon Theatre, New York City. (Photo by Scott Harrison/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
De La Hoya, right, lands a flurry of punches against compatriot Fernando Vargas during the eleventh round at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, September 14, 2002. De La Hoya retained his World Boxing Council 154-pound title with an eleventh-round TKO. (Mike Nelson/AFP/Getty Images)
De La Hoya lands a punch to the chin of Sugar Shane Mosley on September 13, 2003, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Mosley defeated De La Hoya by unanimous decision. (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)
De La Hoya, right, hits Felix Sturm of Germany during their WBO World Middleweight Championship at the MGM Grand on June 5, 2004, in Las Vegas. (Photo by Jed Jacobsohn/ Getty Images)
De La Hoya lies on the mat after a knockout punch to the liver from Bernard Hopkins at the MGM Grand on September 18, 2004, in Las Vegas. Hopkins won the world middleweight title in the ninth round. (Photo by Doug Benc/Getty Images)
Millie talks with Oscar after he was knocked out by Bernard Hopkins for the world middleweight title at the MGM Grand on September 18, 2004, in Las Vegas. (Photo by Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)
De La Hoya, left, fights Ricardo Mayorga, right, during the WBC super welterweight title fight at the MGM Grand May 6, 2006, in Las Vegas. Oscar defeated Ricardo Mayorga by technical knockout in the sixth round. (Photo by Donald Miralle/Getty Images)
De La Hoya weighs in at 154 pounds at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas before his fight against Mayweather. (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)
De La Hoya connects with a right to the face of Mayweather during their WBC super welterweight championship fight May 5, 2007. Mayweather defeated De La Hoya by split decision. (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)
Oscar the humanitarian speaks at his foundation dinner. (Photo courtesy of the author)
Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer, Oscar, and Raul Jaimes, vice president of Golden Boy Promotions, at a foundation dinner. (Photo courtesy of the author)
Oscar, the singer, signs his CD. (Photo courtesy of the author)
Oscar prepares to go onstage at his foundation dinner. (Photo courtesy of the author)
Sister Ceci and brother Joel Jr. pose with the groom at Oscar and Millie’s 2001 wedding. (Photo courtesy of the author)
De La Hoya and Millie attend his “Evening of Champions” Award Gala at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel on October 3, 2002, in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Robert Mora/Getty Images)
Oscar, sister Ceci, and brother Joel at the grand opening of the Cecilia Gonzalez De La Hoya Cancer Center in 2000. (Photo courtesy of the author)
Oscar and Millie at the 2003 Latin Billboard Awards at Miami Arena in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Tom Grizzle/Wireimage)
Oscar and Millie attend People En Español’s 25 Most Beautiful Celebrity Gala at the Roseland Ballroom on May 14, 2003, in New York City. (Photo by Myrna Suarez/Getty Images)
XVII
ANGUISH TO RAGE
Brave hearts and doubting souls.
Warriors and wannabes.
Those willing to die in the ring and those who die a thousand deaths before they even step into the ring.
In his nearly four decades in boxing, trainer Emanuel Steward has seen them all. But he told me he had never seen a fighter quite like me.
It was a compliment.
My unmarked face, quick smile, soft voice, and gentle nature speak of a life far removed from the cutthroat world of boxing. And indeed, as a singer and amateur artist, I feel very comfortable in the entertainment world.
I think it is using my hands to draw and paint that most appeals to me.
Once asked at the last minute if I could supply a piece of artwork for a charity auction using the rawest of materials—crayons and sketch paper—I produced a drawing of a multitiered golf-course green in two hours.
Whatever talent and creativity I have as an artist, I inherited from my mother.
But there is also my father’s side. He was a boxer in his youth and that, too, I inherited.
“I’ve never seen a fighter go through such a transformation when he gets into the ring,” Steward once told me.
My preparation begins long before I see the ring. In the locker room, I like to isolate myself to better focus on the task at hand. I don’t really feel sociable anyway. I am anxious, my nerves are on edge, I sweat a lot, and I can’t control the flutter in my stomach. You’ve heard of butterflies? I feel like I have dozens of them down in the pit of my stomach, flapping their wings and darting back and forth. I shake, shivers running through a body that feels stone cold.
Maybe the worst case of the shakes I ever had was before my fight against Fernando Vargas in 2002. It wasn’t that I was scared. I was confident of victory. It was just nerves.
The first thing I always do when I step between the ropes is to scan the crowd in search of my father.
Our eyes meet and our heads nod.
People tell me my lips tighten and my eyes narrow as I zero in on my opponent. They say, for an instant, I look like I’m going to cry. And then that anguish turns to rage.
The artist has left the building.
Early in my career, when I was facing guys I could blow away, that rage gave me a huge advantage. I could just go into the ring without thinking and let my power take over. If I got hit, no problem. I was so much faster
and stronger than those guys that I knew, inevitably, I was going to knock them out. There was such a difference in skill level.
When I started to face fighters who could really fight, I needed to worry about what they could do to me, not just what I could do to them. That’s when The Professor became invaluable.
The key to his defensive style was the position of the hands. I had always known how to bounce up and down, stay on my toes, and keep the proper distance from my opponent. But by keeping my hands too high, I was losing half a second, or even a second, in trying to block punches. That’s a huge amount of time when a punch is coming at you from such a short distance. When you’re facing a quick fighter who can put together combinations, being slow on blocking the first punch can prove deadly.
What The Professor taught me was to keep my hands a little out in front and coordinate them with my footwork. If my feet moved backward or forward, my hands had to move in unison.
The Professor used to say, “You are the car and your hands are the steering wheel. If you turn one way or the other, your hands have to lead.”
I got very comfortable with that style. I felt invincible.
Robert never got comfortable with this style or with The Professor. Even after I beat Chávez in a dominating performance, he couldn’t bring himself to compliment The Professor or admit his doubts about him had been unfounded, based more on his own shrinking role than on what was best for me. Each time I won under The Professor’s guidance, Robert seemed to grow more insecure.
He would tell my father, “I love you guys. And I know Oscar’s mother would really want me to be here.”
Robert was right about one thing. There was a downside to The Professor. It just didn’t have anything to do with boxing. It was his plan to educate me, which had turned into a nonstop tirade against religion. He preached atheism.
Kind of ironic that a man named Jesús would be an atheist.
It was when Rivero started preaching that my brother gave him the nickname of The Professor. That’s because my brother is also an atheist, so they got along well.
We would spend two or three hours a day in the gym, and much of the rest of the time, we all had to sit around, everybody in camp, and listen to him tell us that there is no God.
“There is nothing beyond man. It doesn’t matter what you believe in. You can believe in that book,” he would say, pointing to an object resting on the table.
The Professor was a very stubborn man, refusing to listen to anyone else’s opinion. He was an educated man—we all respected that—but when he started in on his theories about religion, it was dreadful.
We’d come in from a workout, get something to eat, sit down, and sure enough, he’d start in. We’d think, Oh no, here we go again. He’s our elder, so let’s at least listen.
What was our alternative? We were in training camp. We couldn’t leave. It was ideal for him. He had a captive audience.
The Professor was a powerful speaker, so powerful that he made us at least think about what he was saying. I was raised as a Catholic and wasn’t going to give up my beliefs, but he certainly made you consider the alternative, at least while you were under his spell. This is a man who could point to a piece of string and convince you it could stand up and slither across the room.
Another of his theories was that I would be a better fighter if I drank a glass of wine every day, even on fight days.
“It’s good for the blood,” he would say. “It makes you strong. You’ll feel a little dizzy, but that’s okay. You won’t feel the punches.”
He was different, weird.
But I couldn’t dismiss him entirely because what he was teaching me was working. So while on the one hand, I felt the guy was full of bull and he was talking my ear off all day, on the other hand, I listened to the guy religiously and followed his instructions when it came to boxing.
Following my first victory over Chávez, I was matched against Miguel Ángel Gonzalez, who was 41–0 with thirty-one knockouts. I didn’t expect less. I had just beaten the king of the kings and it wasn’t going to get any easier. I went into that fight handicapped by a sprained right thumb and weakened by the flu, but fortunately, my jab was working well and I could hit Gonzalez almost at will.
I won a unanimous decision, the only negative being a big bruise under my left eye courtesy of my opponent’s right hand. That caused people to whisper that I was a sucker for the right. Until I lost, people were always going to look for supposed flaws.
Next on my dance card was Pernell Whitaker, a master of defense. He was small at five-six, over four inches shorter than me, and had a way of making himself even smaller by curling into a ball. That left me swinging downward at an awkward angle, hitting the back of his head a lot. Whitaker was slippery, tricky, hard to fight. It didn’t help that I went down in the ninth round, not from a punch, but because my legs got tangled. That was counted, unfairly I thought, as a knockdown. Still, I won a close but unanimous decision and Whitaker’s WBC 147-pound title, giving me a belt in a fourth weight division.
Had I finally found the trainer who could complete my growth as a fighter?
Not exactly, according to Arum and Trampler. Things went well for a few fights, only to find the Top Rank brain trust again whispering in my ear that a change was needed. What didn’t they like about The Professor? Trampler told me that while The Professor’s heavy emphasis on defense had been a huge plus for me, there was also a big negative. I was so concerned with avoiding incoming punches that I was no longer throwing my own punches with the same authority. My new style had robbed me of some power, Trampler figured.
Ultimately, though, it was I who made the decision to let The Professor go. The primary reason I did so was not because of his approach to boxing, but because of his religious rants. They were too disruptive to our camp. They added to the friction between Robert and The Professor. There was a lack of unity. We weren’t a team and I got fed up with that.
I felt I had absorbed what The Professor had to offer. It was time to move on to the next guy and learn even more from him. I got the process going with my business adviser, Mike Hernández, telling him my concerns. I knew he would tell Arum, who would discuss it with Trampler, and I would soon have a new trainer to work with Robert.
The Professor’s last fight was my 1997 match against Pernell Whitaker.
When we told The Professor he was out, he showed defiance rather than disappointment. “You guys don’t know what you are doing,” he said, telling me I needed him more than he needed me.
Who did I need in my corner? For my next trainer alongside Robert, the idea was to go in an opposite direction. Rather than a renowned defensive specialist, a retired old master with only a few fighters on his résumé, we wanted an active, experienced, big-name trainer with an appreciation for an aggressive approach. They don’t get any bigger than Emanuel Steward, a legendary figure who has trained fighters ranging from Thomas Hearns to Lennox Lewis.
The two things Manny gave me were confidence and an active right hand. He made me feel good about myself. He told me, “You should walk right through these guys.”
My first fight under Manny was against David Kamau in 1997. If I had still been under The Professor’s guidance, the plan would have been to stay outside, use my jab, counterpunch, and maybe win by decision or a knockout in the later rounds.
When that was presented to Manny, he emphatically said, “No, you’ve got to just go at him, attack him, and knock him out. You can do it.” That was certainly a huge change from The Professor, who was always lecturing me on the danger of absorbing punishment. Manny’s attitude was, as good as I was, I didn’t have to worry about absorbing too much punishment.
Manny wasn’t satisfied with just bringing out the aggressor in me. He was determined to make me a two-handed aggressor. For far too long, I had relied primarily on my left hand. I had a strong left hook and an effective jab, but could I double my effectiveness if I used my right hand with greater frequency? Mann
y was determined to find out. As he pointed out, the mere possibility of an effective right hand would alter the defense of an opponent, leaving more openings for my left hand to crash through and do its work.
It was tough to change a message that had been drilled into my head. In the first round against Kamau, I stuck to the conservative game plan I had grown accustomed to under The Professor, and Kamau was still around when the bell rang three minutes later.
When he came through the ropes to confront me as I sat down on my stool, Manny was fuming.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “Go in there and knock him out.”
I came out in the second round with a new, ferocious mind-set, threw my combinations, and, just as Manny had predicted, knocked Kamau out. When I hit him, his legs were so wobbly, he looked like he was doing the lambada in the ring.
It wouldn’t have surprised me to see my next opponent, Hectór “Macho” Camacho, do the lambada in the ring. A former champion, Camacho was a bit wacko, the kind of guy who would take his shirt off at the podium during press conferences and start flexing his muscles.
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