By Edward Chaykovsky

Former six division world champion and current Golden Boy Promotions CEO, Oscar De La Hoya, will always remember the night he was walking to the ring for the final fight of his career, against Manny Pacquiao, on December 6, 2008 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

It was a fight that many felt was impossible to make. Pacquiao was a world champion at the lightweight limit of 135, while De La Hoya was competing for years at the junior middleweight limit of 154-pounds.

They decided to meet at the welterweight limit of 147. Pacquiao moved up by two divisions and De La Hoya moved down by one.

The move to welterweight wasn't easy. De La Hoya had been fighting at 154 or higher for the last seven years.

He was able to make the weight. He was reportedly on weight even weeks before the fight. At the official weigh-in, he came in 145 - two full pounds below the welterweight limit. It was De La Hoya's lowest weight since 1997 - when he was a junior welterweight. Despite all that, Pacquiao was a huge underdog in the fight.

Squeezing down in weight for Pacquiao had physically drained De La Hoya of his strength and energy. Even during his ring walk, De La Hoya already felt that his body had nothing left and he was going to take a beating once he stepped in the ring.   

"I'll never forget walking to ring that night," De La Hoya told ESPN. "I knew that I was going to get beat up already. It was like walking into a slaughter house and knowing that this is it. I've never felt that before in my life. Imagine going into the ring, knowing that you're going to get beat. I might as well have run back to the dressing room and taken off, but I've always decided to fight but I was a dead man walking when I stepped into the ring against Pacquiao. I had nothing left."

After the fight was over, De La Hoya officially retired and since then he's been a full-time promoter.

As early as 2002, after knocking out Fernando Vargas, De La Hoya was already pondering the idea of becoming a promoter.

"I fought Fernando Vargas and it was a tough, grueling fight that was tough on body and afterwards I thought, 'It's time to think about life after boxing,' " De La Hoya says. "I first became a manager and it was like babysitting and that wasn't for me. I mean I need someone to babysit me. So I looked around and Bob Arum has been doing this for 40 years and Don King has been doing this forever, so I said let me look into promoting."