De La Hoya Gets Clearance to Fight

By Steve Springer

July 12, 2005 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

It didn’t happen in a meeting with his business advisor, Richard Schaefer, or in a conference call with HBO executives or even in a conversation with his father, Joel, who handed him his first pair of boxing gloves.

Instead, Oscar De La Hoya’s future as a participant in the sport was decided Monday morning over French toast in a Pasadena restaurant with only he and his wife, Millie, at the table.

“I got the green light from the boss,” the 32-year-old De La Hoya said later, beaming at the idea of resuming a career that has been stalled since he was knocked out by Bernard Hopkins 10 months ago.

De La Hoya says that he will fight twice more -- in May and September of next year -- before retiring for good.

De La Hoya, a former champion in six weight categories, had originally planned to fight Sept. 17, then moved the date to Nov. 12, then said he wouldn’t fight at all in 2005 because of his wife’s pregnancy. Millie is due to deliver the couple’s first child in December.

She has never been a fan of the violent nature of her husband’s sport, but it was Millie, De La Hoya said, who brought up boxing at breakfast.

“I told her I wanted to concentrate on her and the baby and the business side,” De La Hoya said. “It was she who said, ‘Aren’t you leaving something out?’ ”

De La Hoya has four names on his dance card: middleweights Winky Wright and Felix Trinidad, undisputed welterweight champion Zab Judah and former super-welterweight titleholder Fernando Vargas.

De La Hoya is heavily involved this week as the promoter of Saturday’s Hopkins-Jermain Taylor middleweight title fight at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand Arena, but insists his promotional role has not caused him to forsake his desire to be inside the ropes as well.

Might the passage of another 10 months, the continual expansion of his far-flung business empire and the arrival of a child lessen that desire?

“No,” he insisted, “I have to do this. I can’t go out like this.”

De La Hoya has lost two of his last three fights. After Shane Mosley beat him by decision in 2003, De La Hoya won a decision over unheralded Felix Sturm in De La Hoya’s debut at middleweight in June 2004 before losing to Hopkins, also at 160 pounds.

“I’m tired of losing,” De La Hoya said. “I have to win my last two fights. After I moved to 160 pounds, I looked terrible. I was not myself.”