Oscar De La Hoya retired in April 2009, four months after his 2008 technical knockout loss to Manny Pacquiao. But during the fight itself, De La Hoya didn’t just want his career to end — he wanted his life over as well.
Before facing Pacquiao, De La Hoya was approaching his 36th birthday and had been a professional fighter for 16 years, plus the stellar amateur career that preceded it, including a gold medal in the 1992 Olympics.
The weight limit for De La Hoya-Pacquiao was 147 pounds, marking the first time “The Golden Boy” competed at welterweight since his 2001 win over Arturo Gatti. For the Pacquiao fight, De La Hoya stepped on the scales at 145 pounds, the lightest he’d been since 1997.
“I fought Pacquiao and I was a dead man walking. I walked inside in the ring and my legs were shaking, and I was like, ‘Please just knock me out, just stop me right here,’” De La Hoya told Hall of Fame football player Shannon Sharpe in a recent episode of Club Shay Shay. “I was a zombie. I was drained. I think I had fought Bernard Hopkins at 160 [in 2004, though the Hopkins fight had a contractual catch-weight of 158 pounds, and De La Hoya came in at 155]. And then I said, ‘Let me dare to be great again and fight this young kid who they’re talking about at 147. I weighed in at 144 [De La Hoya weighed in at 145]. I was a skeleton. It was too much.”
De La Hoya said he knew he didn’t have it in him from the outset.
“The first round happened, he punched me, I couldn’t throw back. My instincts weren’t there. The fast twitch muscles weren’t there,” De La Hoya said. “I literally wanted to die in that ring. In the eighth round everybody was going to stop it, or the seventh round, including the referee, the trainer. I said, ‘No, I want one more,’ because in my head I was thinking if he punches me, maybe I won’t wake up.
“I wanted my whole life to die. The whole life I was living at the time. Having to go through rehabs, having to go through all this fame and money and women and this and that, it was just overwhelming,” De La Hoya recalled. “Now I can’t perform. Now I don’t have the last thing that I love, that I worked so hard for. I don’t have it anymore, so just end it here, in the middle of the ring, just punch me so I can die.”
De La Hoya remained in his corner after the eighth.
Sharpe asked whether De La Hoya should’ve asked for the fight to be at junior middleweight. That year, Pacquiao had started 2008 as a junior lightweight with a split decision over Juan Manuel Marqiuez, moved up to lightweight for a stellar TKO of David Diaz, and then checked in at 142 for the fight with De La Hoya.
“I don’t think they’d have done it [at 154],” De La Hoya said. “He was coming up in weight. It was probably too much at the time. but even at ’54 he probably still would’ve beat me.”
Follow David Greisman on Twitter @FightingWords2. His book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” is available on Amazon.
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