LOS ANGELES — Oscar De La Hoya’s farewell tour is beginning at home. He can only hope it doesn’t end there, too.
De La Hoya fights Saturday night against light-hitting Steve Forbes in what is scheduled to be the first of three fights before he calls it a well-done career by the end of the year. It’s a homecoming of sorts for the fighter from East L.A., but merely an appetizer for bigger things later this year against the likes of Floyd Mayweather Jr., and possibly Miguel Cotto.
De La Hoya hand-picked Forbes to give him a fight, and he’s a prohibitive 17-1 favorite to beat the former 130-pound champion in what on paper looks like little more than an exhibition before the home fans. But, as De La Hoya well knows from his near loss to Felix Sturm in another tuneup a few years back, nothing is ever settled until the fighters actually meet in the ring.
“This is no pushover fight,” said De La Hoya, sounding like the promoter he also is in this fight. “I fell for that trap before. Every fighter I fight goes to a whole new level when they fight me.”
With good reason. Not too many other fighters have made the millions De La Hoya has, and no other fighters are getting their own statue in front of the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles.
De La Hoya will be memorialized there next to Magic Johnson and Wayne Gretzky, the perfect spot for a hometown hero who made it big.
“I’m blown away by it,” De La Hoya said. “I’m going to drive by it every day just to make sure they don’t egg it.”
De La Hoya, who has moved past boxing to become a fight promoter and business operator, doesn’t need the money he will make to fight Forbes in the first boxing match on the soccer field where David Beckham occasionally plays for the Los Angeles Galaxy. He owns an office building, newspapers, Ring Magazine, and recently bought an interest in the Houston Dynamo soccer team.
But at the age of 35 he still wants to fight, and wants to go out big in a pair of megafights once his business with Forbes is taken care of.
De La Hoya has lost three of his last five fights and hasn’t beaten an opponent of note in six years, but he remains hugely popular, and nearly 30,000 fans are expected to be at the Home Depot Center for a fight that will be televised by HBO.
“I want to knock him out,” De La Hoya said of Forbes. “I want to look special. This is what I need.”
Forbes isn’t a bad fighter by any means, but there’s a reason De La Hoya is such a favorite in what essentially is a tuneup fight for a September rematch with Mayweather, who beat him by split decision a year ago. He’s smaller than De La Hoya and easy enough to find in the ring, a combination that moved him to the top of the list when De La Hoya was looking for someone to fill the role of opponent.
Forbes believe he can do even more than that, even though his biggest claim to fame since moving up in weight was that he lost in the finals of the “Contender” reality show.
“I think he’s put a little more thought in me than at first,” Forbes said. “I don’t feel any pressure or intimidation factor.”
De La Hoya, of course, is the most popular fighter of his era and has made tens of millions in his career. Everytime he fights it’s a big event, while Forbes will be in the spotlight for the first time.
Forbes is enjoying it all, having his picture taken before a banner promoting the fight as a souvenir and collecting promotional beer cans with the pictures of the two fighters on them.
“A year ago I’m fighting on undercards,” said Forbes, who is 33-5 but has just nine knockouts. “I never imagined anything like this. You hope for it, dream about it. But this is it.”
De La Hoya moved back down in weight for the fight, and says he has been at 147 pounds for more than a month for a fight with a contract weight of 150 pounds.
He’s literally a hungry fighter, munching on some organic blueberries while chatting with reporters at a press conference Wednesday promoting the fight at the Los Angeles downtown library plaza.
De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions is putting the fight on, and he played the role of promoter as well as he does the boxer, giving interviews in English and Spanish to anyone who asked.
“This year is going to be the biggest year of my life and I’m ready for it,” De La Hoya said. “I’m going to feel very sad to retire but it’s time when these fights are over. Nothing is going to convince me to come back. Nothing.”
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