Oscar De La Hoya made his long-awaited comeback announcement on Friday for July 3rd against an opponent to be announced. The original ‘Golden Boy’ De La Hoya (39-6, 30 KOs) broke the news of his comeback during today’s Jake Paul vs. Ben Askren news conference, telling the media that he’ll be returning on July 3rd.
It was obviously a strategic move by the 48-year-old De La Hoya in picking the Jake Paul press conference to announce his comeback because it’ll get a lot of play on social media by Jake and his many followers.
Oscar was an opportunist in picking that event to announce his comeback, but it should work well for him.
It’s just too bad that De La Hoya didn’t have an opponent picked out already, as that would have made the news of his July 3rd comeback much bigger.
The former six-division world champion De La Hoya, who once ruled the sport with an iron glove, hasn’t seen action since 2008 when he lost to Manny Pacquiao by an eighth-round stoppage defeat.
A rematch with Pacquiao would be HUGE for De La Hoya, but it would have to be at 154 or heavier because he’s looking chubby right now.
Although De La Hoya talked of wanting to come out of retirement five years ago when he was 43-years-old to face middleweight champion Gennadiy Golovkin, he decided against making the return.
In hindsight, that would have been a better time for De La Hoya to return than now, as he looked younger back then, and he would have made a lot of money.
If De La Hoya picks the right opponent for his July 3rd comeback fight, he could make a massive amount of cash. Earlier this week, De La Hoya said he wanted to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr in a rematch.
That’s a fight that would need to take place at a later time since Mayweather is already scheduled to face YouTuber Logan Paul next.
“July 3rd, I’m making my comeback,” said 48-year-old Oscar De La Hoya to Snoop Doggy Dog of Triller.
“You heard it here first and he dropped the microphone. Only West Coast kings can do that, do you understand me,” said Snoop during the Jake Paul vs. Ben Askren press conference on Friday.
“So with that being said, on the 3rd, he’s [De La Hoya] back in the ring. So that means he’s getting back in the ring and putting on some boxing gloves,” said Snoop.
With former heavyweight world champions Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield planning on returning to the ring for a May 29th fight in a big money fight, you have to take De La Hoya’s comeback seriously.
If De La Hoya picks the right opponent for his comeback, he can make massive cash.
It’s important that De La Hoya NOT change his mind this time and back out as he did five years ago when he spoke about wanting to come out of retirement to fight GGG. Supposedly, De La Hoya was talked out of it by his family.
It’s clear that De La Hoya isn’t going to beat any of the elite-level fighters that he’s talking about wanting to fight. So as long as Oscar understands that he’s probably not going to win if he faces an active fighter, it won’t be too bad.
There are some retired fighters that boxing fans would love to see De La Hoya. Here’s a shortlist:
- Kostya Tszyu
- Julio Cesar Chavez Sr
- Fernando Vargas
- Shane Mosley
- Miguel Cotto
- Bernard Hopkins
- Felix Trinidad
- Roy Jones Jr
- Ricardo Mayorga
Whoever De La Hoya fights, they need to make it realistic and not the fake-looking exhibition match that we saw between Mike Tyson and Roy Jones Jr. That looked really bad, and it was disappointing given that it was pay-per-view.