By William Dettloff

Most of us had a minor, singular doubt about Oscar De La Hoya going into his fight Saturday night with Ricardo Mayorga. We didn’t know if he was still a fighter. The loss to Bernard Hopkins, the 20 months off, the promoting. And all that damned money. How could anyone that rich still have it in him to fight?

Hasn’t it always been this way with De La Hoya? We’ve always wondered if he was enough fighter. We wondered when he came out of the Olympics. We wondered when he started winning alphabet titles. We wondered when he started cutting pop records and when a lot of close decisions started going his way.

We wondered about De La Hoya when it frequently appeared that he targeted the safer titleholders in the divisions he skipped through. We wondered when he threw away those last rounds against Felix Trinidad.

Shame on us. Like him or not, De La Hoya has proved over and over again that he is a fighter. You can argue his quality as a fighter one way or another, but not his authenticity. He’s answered that question numerous times: in the last round against Ike Quartey; against Fernando Vargas in what everyone forgets was a very close, back-and-forth fight; against Felix Sturm, when, on the worst night of his career, he dug his toes into the canvas and threw punches because it was all he could do. Pretenders don’t do that.

The Hopkins fight? I’m among those who believe he felt the pressure, said to hell with it, and found a soft spot when Hopkins landed a harmless left to the body. But I can’t prove it and even if I could, it was a lot to ask of a guy who turned pro at 130 pounds.

De La Hoya never looked more like a fighter than he did on Saturday night. And not just because he took apart Mayorga piece-by-piece. A lot of guys can do that (though not Vernon Forrest, maddeningly). It was the fun he had doing it. It was the smile on his face afterward.

It was the way De La Hoya took his time—and don’t think it was because he wanted to carry Mayorga solely to punish him for his rudeness. If he carried him at all, it was because when you’re having that much fun, you don’t rush to get it over. You take your time. You savor it.

Yes, De La Hoya had fun in there. I’d be willing to bet he had more fun beating down Mayorga than he has promoting guys, cashing eight-figure checks, or anything else you can name. It’s why all that talk about him possibly retiring, even if he won, was hogwash.

Fighters almost never go out on a win. If they do, it’s a close, hard win that should have been easy. They have to be convinced, usually with several hard beatings, that they can’t do it anymore. De La Hoya’s no different. He’s a fighter. I’m hoping we don’t forget it again.

Bill Dettloff can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net

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