Oscar De La Hoya is going to climb aboard a boat tonight, but how much do you want to bet that it’s Floyd Mayweather Jr. who gets seasick?
There is nothing Mayweather can’t do with a pair of gloves on his fists, but he’ll probably be doing nothing but wringing his hands for the next few days.
De La Hoya is headed to sea to decide whether he wants to fight again. He has said for months that he planned to fight twice more and would cap his brilliant career with a farewell fight Sept. 16.
But in the afterglow of his May 6 destruction of Ricardo Mayorga at the MGM Grand, he’s rethinking those plans.
De La Hoya has more money than he could ever spend. He has an infant son he doesn’t want to leave at home while he’s at training camp and he has a torn rotator cuff. His trainer also happens to be Mayweather’s father, and Floyd Mayweather Sr. has made it plain that he’s adamantly opposed to the fight.
That opinion will carry a lot of weight with De La Hoya, who has grown close personally with Mayweather Sr. since they began working together six years ago.
He also knows that few knowledgeable boxing people think he could defeat Mayweather Jr.
Golden Boy Promotions matchmaker Eric Gomez, a boyhood friend of De La Hoya, says bluntly, “I don’t like the fight for Oscar.”
Retirement, all of a sudden, looks like a pretty good option.
But one doesn’t win world titles in six weight classes, as De La Hoya has done, without having the competitive arrogance that makes a good athlete great.
De La Hoya knows a bout against Mayweather, the unbeaten welterweight champion and world’s finest fighter, would be tough.
De La Hoya is sharp enough to know that a victory, however unlikely, wouldn’t be impossible. Mayweather, after all, would be coming up yet another weight class, to 154 pounds. Mayweather has fought only twice at 147 and couldn’t knock out china-chinned Zab Judah, so a jump to 154 definitely would be in De La Hoya’s favor.
But if he doesn’t fight, he doesn’t lose, and if he doesn’t lose, the last memory his fans will have of him is with his arms raised triumphantly as another title belt was wrapped around his waist. For a guy like De La Hoya, who is obsessed with his place in history, it’s an appealing way to go out.
He first suggested retirement about 90 minutes after he had stopped Mayorga in one of the best performances of his career.
Nothing De La Hoya has said since would indicate he’s backing off that stand. He said Thursday by telephone from his home in Puerto Rico that if he fights again, it will be against Mayweather, but he wouldn’t commit one way or another.
“I have to look at whether I could have a good performance against Floyd Jr.,” De La Hoya said. “Is Floyd (Sr.) going to be in my corner? I’m on such a high right now. Would I be in that position once again after fighting Floyd Jr.?
“The possibility of losing is obviously there. I have a lot of things to think about.”
He said he will make up his mind Sunday as he sails the Caribbean.
Until then, expect Mayweather to be popping more than a few antacids. De La Hoya’s decision could mean the difference of as much as $20 million to him.
A De La Hoya-Mayweather fight might become the best-selling pay-per-view bout in history. Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson sold 1.99 million pay-per-view subscriptions when they fought for the heavyweight title in 2002.
Even if De La Hoya-Mayweather sold only 1.5 million pay-per-view subscriptions, it would become the top-selling non-heavyweight pay-per-view fight ever and would generate in the range of $80 million.
De La Hoya needs to sit down without what he calls outside influences and decide whether to accept Mayweather’s challenge, because he insists he won’t come back once he retires.
“It’s still 50-50 now,” De La Hoya said. “I think of something and it makes me lean one way, but then something else comes up and it pushes me back the other way. I’m undecided. I really am. This is really, really difficult.”
Perhaps, but it can’t be nearly as difficult as it is on Floyd Mayweather Jr.
That’s why it is a good bet that it will be Mayweather, not De La Hoya, who gets seasick this weekend.
Kevin Iole’s boxing column is published Saturday. He can be reached at 396-4428 or [email protected].
