American Son

by Oscar De La Hoya

  Shane did seem stronger in the fight. I tried to box a little more than I did the first time we met and time his punches to nullify the speed.

  I felt it was a close fight, but I didn’t think I lost. Who knows, maybe I did, but I think I did just enough to win. Not an obvious win like the Trinidad fight, but a win nonetheless. I was frustrated once again. I felt like the judges in Vegas had something against me and I was getting weary of it. My recent fights had been so close, why couldn’t some of them have gone my way?

  Shane and I have never talked about the BALCO allegations, but I’m sure we will someday.

  XXIV

  GOLDEN BOY TAKES ON THE BIG BOYS

  I was like a wild horse bolting from the barn. Ahead lay a new frontier, lush with possibilities and boundless room to roam. But behind lay that familiar stable, confining but reassuring, secure from the menacing elements outside, stocked with all my material needs.

  While Bob Arum was no longer guiding my career, I wasn’t quite ready to gallop off on my own. I still needed someone to handle the reins, looser than before, to be sure, but still pointing me in the right direction. I needed a knowledgeable promoter.

  Eventually, that would be Richard, but, when I first broke with Bob, Richard was just getting acclimated to the always tricky labyrinth that stands between a fighter and his purse.

  Dan Goossen came to see us. The founder of the Ten Goose Gym, he proposed becoming my promoter under a company that would be called Golden Goose Promotions. Not quite what we were looking for.

  I had an endorsement deal at the time with Univision and its majority owner, Jerry Perenchio. We felt if we could convince Perenchio to become my promoter, thus joining forces with Univision, the largest Spanish-language network in the United States, it would make a great partnership.

  But this was about more than just entertainment. It wasn’t exactly like we were picking a TV executive, clueless about boxing, to run my career. Perenchio had promoted one of the most successful fights of the twentieth century, the first Ali–Frazier battle at Madison Square Garden. I was very much in awe of this billionaire and felt this was a man who could make really big fights happen.

  He was very passionate about boxing when we met with him, so passionate that he agreed to become my promoter.

  Perenchio had a different way of doing business from Arum, a different way from almost all boxing promoters. He was immersed in the entertainment business and saw no reason why that approach couldn’t be effective in my sport as well.

  My first fight under the Perenchio banner was a match against Arturo Gatti at Las Vegas’s MGM Grand Garden Arena, nine months after the first Mosley fight. Howard Rose, one of the most successful music promoters in the business and Perenchio’s point man for boxing, designed posters for the fight with only my likeness on them. No sign of Gatti.

  Rose, who was used to promoting musical acts, thought he could do the same with a fighter. It was like I was putting on a concert at the MGM Grand.

  Was I the new Wayne Newton or Elton John? Rose referred to me as “an artist,” and said those who were criticizing the promotion were “jealous.”

  I don’t know that Rose fully grasped the idea that boxing’s appeal comes from the tension between the two fighters. It was not a virtuoso performance by Oscar De La Hoya that was being sold. It was the possibility that I could lose, no matter how much of an underdog I was facing.

  Some people like to wager on the underdog at the sports books, watch in anticipation of an upset, or simply like to see a champion fall. Most of all, the fans want to see a competitive match.

  It they want a virtuoso performance, they’ll go see Jennifer Lopez or Marc Anthony.

  My performance, as it turned out, wasn’t bad. I made a triumphant return to the ring with a five-round TKO victory over Gatti in March of 2001. I knew Gatti was going to stand in front of me and attack from the opening bell. I had no doubt I could overpower him and that’s what I did. With a sold-out arena and an impressive performance, I was reassured that night that I hadn’t lost anything during my hiatus.

  In June, I was scheduled to fight Javier Castillejo in Vegas. Playing off the traditional time of the year for proms, one poster had both Castillejo and me in tuxedos with the words PROM NIGHT IT AIN’T. It seemed a bit strange to me.

  That’s the way it seemed to Richard as well when he saw the poster along with a few others displayed in a conference room. Along with several Univision executives, he was there to choose the best one.

  “I’m sorry, but with all these concepts here, I really don’t like this one,” said Richard, pointing to the prom-night poster, “because it really has nothing to do with boxing.”

  They all agreed.

  In walked Perenchio, who took one look at the choices and said, “Oh, I like this one, ‘Prom Night It Ain’t.’”

  Richard said it was the one he didn’t like. Perenchio looked around the room, pointed to the prom-night poster, and said, “Okay, let’s take a vote. Everybody who thinks this is the one, raise your hand.”

  All the executives, the very same executives who had agreed it was unsuitable a moment before, raised their hands.

  Prom night it was for that fight.

  While I wasn’t crazy about the poster, I was pleased with the training camp. I was trying to win a championship in a fifth weight division, 154 pounds, so it was a big fight for me. I knew that it could be a dangerous match because getting in the ring with added bulk the first time can be tough; I decided to come to Vegas two weeks before the event, a week earlier than normal.

  I rented a house near the MGM Grand Hotel where the fight was to be held. It was June, a time when it’s hot and dry in the desert. It must have been 115 degrees minimum every day. We had this nice pool in the back of our place, so, in the afternoon before sparring, I would lie out for like an hour. I did that for eight straight days, thinking, Oh, I’m going to get a nice tan.

  As the fight grew closer, I noticed I was starting to feel weak, but I didn’t make the connection to my pool time, so I continued to work on that tan.

  When I weighed in Friday afternoon, with the fight on Saturday, everything still seemed fine. I felt good.

  After the weigh-in, I went out to the pool as usual. Only instead of staying out there an hour, I made it an hour and a half.

  When I woke up Saturday morning, I felt really hot. No wonder. I had the worst sunburn of my life. When somebody touched me, it stung. My legs were so weak I literally couldn’t walk.

  I somehow made it to the arena about three hours before the event and sat down on a couch in the dressing room, but when I tried to stand up, I had trouble doing so.

  I wasn’t going to tell anybody what I was feeling. I had trained hard for this fight and I still felt I could do it.

  By seven thirty, seven forty, as it came time to go out to the ring, I seriously thought for the first time about not fighting because of the continuing weakness in my legs.

  Then I started hearing the fans out in the arena cheering for me, yelling, “Oscar! Oscar!” That pepped me up and I think the adrenaline took over.

  I still hadn’t told anybody what was going on. I starting loosening up by throwing punches into the mitts held by my trainer, Floyd Mayweather Sr.

  By the time I walked down the aisle, my legs were actually shaking. When I took that first step up into the ring, I thought I was going to fall before I made it through the ropes. That’s how weak my legs were.

  I was cursing myself for having sat out in the sun for so long. I made it into the ring on another rush of adrenaline, but there was still a fight to be fought. In the first rounds, my legs were not steady. I had to fight through the stinging and the soreness as much as I had to fight Castillejo.

  Ultimately, all the conditioning and training I had done, and the fact that I was the superior fighter, carried me to a win by decision.

  It was a fight I had made much more difficult than it should have been.

  After it was o
ver, my doctor examined me and determined I was suffering from heatstroke.

  It was Perenchio who ended our professional relationship when the CEO of Univision left, forcing Perenchio to assume those duties as well as his own.

  He called Richard and told him he was going to have to bow out of the promotion business because of his increased workload.

  “I really can’t play promoter anymore,” Perenchio said. “I worked with you for this past year and I am confident Oscar is in great hands. You guys will do just fine.”

  He drove to my house that night to tell me personally, and that meant a lot to me. It was Perenchio who gave us the wings that have enabled us to soar so high in the promotion business. We learned from him to be less dependent on the HBO marketing machine, how to come up with creative marketing concepts of our own, and how to find better ways to reach particular markets we are targeting and the Spanish-language audience in general.

  With Perenchio’s exit and a year of hands-on involvement by Richard, it was time to take off on our own. So we formed Golden Boy Promotions.

  If I was going to get into the promotion business, I felt it was better to do so while I was active as a fighter. The limelight is still on me and that gives me clout with HBO and other networks, with the media in general and with other fighters. If media members want to talk to me about my upcoming fights, they know the best opportunities for access are at Golden Boy press conferences, other fights, or media events that I always attend. Signing fighters for Golden Boy is easier while I’m active because they know they’ll have a chance for exposure on the undercards of my fights. All these factors helped me to quickly become a major player in the promotional business.

  I look at Ray Leonard, who has attempted to become a promoter after retiring, and that seems a tougher way to go.

  Not that it wasn’t tough for Richard and me in the beginning. While Richard had learned the big picture, had sat in on HBO meetings and negotiated with Bob, neither of us knew the inner workings of the business, the behind-the-scenes grunt work that determines whether a boxing show will be successful. From printing tickets to hiring concessionaires to installing a ring, there are dozens of crucial jobs that must come together.

  And let’s face it, we needed to find these people because we weren’t going to start at the top, putting on a pay-per-view blockbuster at the MGM Grand or Madison Square Garden. I may have had a big name in the sport, but that was as a fighter, not a promoter. I had to prove myself all over again, just as I had when I came out of Barcelona.

  First, we bought Roy Englebrecht’s promotional company in Orange County. His regularly scheduled fights at the Irvine Marriott have become one of the longest-running boxing shows in the country as they stretch into a third decade.

  That’s because Roy isn’t just a flashy promoter who twirls his cigar and counts the money in the back room. He’s involved in everything on-site from how the chairs are arranged to who the cut men will be. He showed us everything, from printing the tickets to selling the tickets to handling the sponsors to dealing with the athletic commission.

  Roy has a school for prospective promoters. After attending classes, they receive a degree certifying they are qualified to apply for a promoter’s license. Since we had the luxury of being a little wealthier, we just bought the whole university, professor and all.

  Of course you can have the greatest arena, the cheapest tickets, the tastiest beer, and the most comfortable seats, but if you don’t have good fights, those seats will be empty.

  The quality of the fights is determined by the matchmaker, someone who not only knows who the best fighters are, both the current stars and the hot prospects, but also understands styles, envisioning which fighters will clash in an entertaining manner.

  Our search for good matchmakers led us to Don and Lorraine Chargin, Hall of Famers whose expertise has been demonstrated over half a century. Nobody has anything bad to say about them. That’s pretty remarkable in this sport.

  We also moved Eric Gomez, my boyhood friend who was working for my foundation, into the matchmaking operation. A lifelong boxing fan, he learned quickly under the Chargins’ tutelage and is now a first-rate matchmaker on his own.

  We experimented with a management company, signing Olympian José Navarro. Richard and I were his managers and Lou Di-Bella was his promoter, but we quickly realized the management side was not where we wanted to be. It was a pain in the neck. So Navarro was our first and last fighter. We focused all our energy on the promotional side, where we can have the biggest impact on the sport.

  We started slow, with nontelevised shows for about a year. Then it was time to bring in the cameras and take it to the next level. So who did we call? Jerry Perenchio, of course.

  He had Friday-night fights on Telefutura, an ideal spot for our young company. Even though Perenchio had been our promoter and was still a good friend, he was also a businessman. He cautioned us that despite our previous ties, despite the Golden Boy name, we were going to have to prove ourselves by staging fights that drew good ratings and pleased the sponsors.

  Perenchio started us out with four shows. Determined to make an impact, I put myself out there, hoping to draw on my fame. I was at the press conferences and at the fights, happy to go before the cameras. Most of the questions from the media were about my future fights, but that was okay. The mere presence of the media drew attention to the fights in our Golden Boy shows. With a good publicity kick and competitive matches, we got good ratings, good enough to impress Perenchio.

  He gave us more shows the next year and more the year after that. Now we are up to eighteen a year.

  Having rung up the numbers on Telefutura, we decided to go for the big boy, HBO, the ultimate prize for a promoter. If you are on HBO, you are a serious player.

  They had the ultimate vehicle for us to get in the door, the HBO Latino channel. How perfect was that for Golden Boy Promotions? HBO is always looking for live programming, so why not a boxing series called Oscar De La Hoya Presents Boxeo de Oro, a monthly show.

  HBO bought it and ran it for three years, producing several fighters who wound up graduating to matches on the main HBO channel, fighters like Israel Vázquez, Daniel Ponce de León, Librado Andrade, and Abner Mares.

  It was a great arrangement for everybody. We got a strong selling point for signing fighters, offering them the chance to appear on an HBO channel, and a venue to allow them to develop. HBO got programming for its Latino channel and a breeding ground for its future main-event performers.

  We went back to Bob Arum for my next fight, against Fernando Vargas. Why? Because it was a big match, the kind Bob was great at promoting.

  “We are still not ready to do a mega-event like this,” Richard said, “a Super Bowl of boxing. Let’s continue to learn. When I tell you I am ready, I will be ready. There’s a lot of money at stake. Just trust me on this one.”

  We would work with Bob on a fight-by-fight basis, which was fine with me. I wasn’t about to get sucked back in by way of a long-term contract.

  Bob promoted my fights against Vargas in 2002, and Yory Boy Campas and Mosley in 2003. During that period, we introduced our Golden Boy logo and found other ways to put our name out there in preparation for flying solo.

  Bob also did my fights against Felix Sturm and Bernard Hopkins in 2004. It was during the buildup for the Sturm fight at the MGM Grand that I knew Richard was finally ready to assume command. The match was part of a doubleheader. I was coming up to 160 pounds for the first time and Hopkins was defending his middleweight title against Robert Allen. If Bernard and I both won, we would face each other in September.

  “I would do this differently,” Richard told me when he saw how the show was being presented to the public. “I’m not attacking Arum or belittling the promotion, but look at what we have. Hopkins is defending his title for a record eighteenth time. You are attempting to become the first fighter in the history of the sport to become a champion in six weight classes. These fights are
being promoted as must-win matches for two legends headed for a showdown. This is the semifinals, but somehow, the semifinals never quite get the ratings that the finals get in any sport. I would promote this as a historic night that stands on its own. You have two legends trying to pull off legendary feats in one show, a legendary night in and of itself.”

  Richard no longer needed to depend on Bob, the old master, to sell a fight. The young lion had a vision of his own, a pretty good vision.

  Richard was right in his assessment of the semifinal approach. The doubleheader pulled in about 350,000 pay-per-view buys while my match against Hopkins three months later attracted about 950,000 buys.

  It would soon be time to take the training wheels off Golden Boy Promotions. We had the knowledge, the foundation, the structure, the matchmakers, the television dates, and the young talent. Only one thing left. The hot talent, the big names, the fighters who would allow us to catapult from Friday-night lights to Saturday-night prime time.

  What would be the springboard to get us there? An old Hollywood idea with a unique fistic twist. In 1919, D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, all big movie figures of the time, broke away from the studios, which controlled the industry, and formed their own company, United Artists.

  We did the same thing with Golden Boy, signing fighters like Hopkins, Mosley, and Marco Antonio Barrera as equity partners. We provide the infrastructure and financial backing, they bring their assets, and together we are a force able to compete with the old powerhouses of the sport like Arum and King. It’s a model that has been working since 1919.

  The long-awaited event—Golden Boy Promotions promotes the Golden Boy—finally occurred Cinco de Mayo weekend of 2006 when I faced Ricardo Mayorga.

  That fight attracted 925,000 buys, nearly as many as I got against Hopkins, one of the all-time great middleweight champs, nearly two years earlier. De La Hoya–Mayorga was a coming-out party for Golden Boy Promotions. We showed the world we could successfully stage a blockbuster event.