Key Period for Golden Boy as Oscar De La Hoya Faces Three Big Weeks

Boxing loves a good comeback story, and even though this one is hooked to two substantial underdogs, Oscar De La Hoya being in the starring role certainly attracts attention.

Rocked by his 2020 split with the sport’s most popular fighter, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, De La Hoya is now back, poised to send four significant fighters into matches between Saturday and Cinco de Mayo weekend.

Saturday night at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, 140-pound challenger Ryan Garcia seeks the WBC belt when he meets unbeaten titleholder Devin Haney.

Next weekend in Fresno, California, De La Hoya fighters Jose Ramirez (the former unified 140-pound champion) and unbeaten junior middleweight Vergil Ortiz will fight in separate bouts.

And on May 4, De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions will send unbeaten former junior middleweight titleholder Jaime Munguia to pursue the undisputed super middleweight belts worn by none other than Alvarez.

“I’ve been looking at the boxing calendar and realized that for Oscar De La Hoya’s company, Golden Boy Promotions, this is a really big couple of weeks here,” said ProBox TV analyst Paulie Malignaggi on Thursday’s episode of “Deep Waters.”

Garcia (24-1, 20 KOs) has behaved erratically and bizarrely during the promotion leading up to Saturday night’s showdown against Las Vegas’ Haney (31-0, 15 KOs), who is a -900 favorite against his former amateur rival.

But De La Hoya has insisted throughout that Garcia would be there on fight night, and when Garcia verbally provoked Haney to shove him atop the Empire State Building at a Tuesday photo-op, De La Hoya encouraged his fighter, advising Garcia that when the angered Haney charges him Saturday night, pop him with a knockout left-handed punch.

De La Hoya, 51, has seen so much throughout a career launched by a gold medal at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. He proceeded to win world titles in six divisions and engaged in a string of major bouts before retiring following a 2008 loss to Manny Pacquiao.

His Golden Boy Promotions weathered the defection of manager Al Haymon’s fighters to Premier Boxing Champions in 2013 thanks to Alvarez, and then the mentor and prized fighter split over financial and personal disputes as De La Hoya endured some rehab stints.

“A win for Ryan Garcia would be a shock upset,” Malignaggi said, “but it would set Ryan Garcia and Golden Boy shooting to the moon in regard to promotability and the big news they would make and generate.”

Ramirez and Ortiz are both substantial favorites on the Fresno card, setting them in motion toward title shots at welterweight and junior middleweight, respectively.

Then comes the seminal Alvarez-Munguia showdown. There is no love lost between the “face of boxing” and his predecessor in that role.

“Oscar has an underdog who is very live to me in Jaime Munguia,” Malignaggi said. “We’ve seen Canelo look a little lackluster in his recent performances, and Munguia’s a young hotshot, an exciting guy. … You’ve got the whole animosity between Canelo and his old promoter, and you’ll have a lot of newsworthy sound bites in the next couple of weeks.

“Golden Boy has the potential to join the big promoters [PBC, Top Rank] if they get some results, even if they get only one result [among Garcia and Munguia]. If they get two [wins] – you thought Oscar was wacky before? – if he wins these two, [he’s] going absolutely [crazy], and who knows what’s going to happen.”