By Jake Donovan

A lot has been said of the legacy that is left behind now that Oscar de la Hoya has officially called a close to his eventual Hall of Fame career.

His résumé reads like a who’s who list of the best fighters from 130-160 in the span of nearly two decades.

The events in which he participated made for the most lucrative career in boxing history. More than 14 million pay-per-view buys have been placed when he had top billing, raising over $600 million in PPV revenue, and hundreds of millions more in ticket sales and sponsorship.

There was never a fight in which he participated that featured more empty seats than butts that filled them. Never in his professional career did he face a fighter with a losing record.

He’s the last U.S. Olympic Gold Medalist to truly parlay his amateur success into a lucrative Hall of Fame career.

But there’s one area in which Oscar truly distances himself from the rest of the pack. It’s not limited to his ability to draw crowds and revenue. Nor is it just about the superior level of competition he maintained throughout most of his career.

It was his ability to play the game on both sides of the ropes.

There are fighters who stand head and shoulders above their peers in measuring talent, but fail to translate that dominance into box office success. There have been those who drew well, but preferred the low road to stardom for fear that a real challenge would expose their limitations, thus ruining their marketability in the process.

De la Hoya boasted the uncanny ability of juggling the act of being among the sport’s best and its most marketable.

His comeuppance in the sport came at a time when the phrase “there’s boxing, and then there’s heavyweights” still rang true from a marketing standpoint.

As he began to make his run as a pay-per-view headliner, Mike Tyson was released from prison and set to make his second tour as the world’s most famous fighter. Tyson’s two fights with Evander Holyfield shattered pay-per-records, with the second fight breaking all of the records set by its predecessor.

During that time, Oscar merely had to settle for being the sport’s most marketable non-heavyweight. He did so by taking on the best the sport had to offer early on in his career, and never looking back in that regard.

Sure there were some dunkers along the way. A 1996 mismatch against Darryl Tyson came on the heels of a Fighter of the Year-level campaign the year prior. A similarly sparring session-level showcase came a year later when he faced David Kamau. And again twelve months after that, when he met hapless French journeyman Patrick Charpentier.

But the common thread among the list is not that they were mismatches, but bouts that ranged from well attended to circus-like atmosphere. The June ’98 mandatory defense against Charpentier crammed 45,000 into the Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas, sparking a cover story from The Ring magazine (nearly a decade before he would buy the publication) and an industry-wide frenzy over watching his every move.

After an unnecessary sequel against Chavez later that year, pressure was put on de la Hoya and promoter Top Rank to start making the big fights.

Team de la Hoya delivered.

Ike Quartey. Felix Trinidad. Shane Mosley. Fernando Vargas. Mosley again. Bernard Hopkins. Floyd Mayweather, and in the end, Manny Pacquiao. Oscar faced all while his popularity continued to skyrocket.

To put in perspective how easy it would’ve been for de la Hoya and his handlers to spend the rest of his career screwing the pooch, think about this: the 45,000 he drew for his mismatch against Charpentier was the largest American crowd for a boxing event since the September 1993 super fight between Pernell Whitaker and Julio Cesar Chavez.

Instead, he willingly stepped up when prompted to, at a time when a lot of his peers were standing around waiting for a handout. Felix Trinidad and Ike Quartey were not only rumored to fight, but had contracts signed and sealed to make the fight a reality. Yet subsequent promotional issues and lawsuits managed to kill the fight.

It could’ve easily just been postponed and rescheduled but was instead canceled altogether. If nothing else, it was a symbol of the way things were atop the welterweight division, the most loaded in the sport. For years, people marveled at the possible outcomes if the big three – Whitaker, Trinidad and Quartey – were to ever meet in the ring.

All three share a common opponent – Oscar de la Hoya, even if all three fights resulted in disputed outcomes. Wins over Whitaker and Quartey can easily be argued the other way, while many believe that his first official loss – a 12-round majority decision in his September 1999 super fight with Trinidad – was merely a case of the industry delivering a make-up call.

As the 1990’s became the 2000’s, Oscar would exit his optimal prime but his popularity only continue to grew. And it came at a time when overall interest in the sport steadily declined. Lennox Lewis’ knockout win over Mike Tyson in 2002 was arguably the last remaining heavyweight title fight in which the sports world truly gave a damn.

From that point on, the sport belonged to Oscar de la Hoya. 

The rock-star run began three months after Lewis-Tyson, when a long awaited grudge match with Fernando Vargas resulted in perhaps Oscar’s greatest hit on both sides of the ropes. A Fight Of the Year worthy bout was capped with de la Hoya stopping Vargas moments into the 11th round, to the tune of 935,000 pay-per-view buys.

Remove de la Hoya’s name from the fight, and there isn’t a non-heavyweight in his generation that can claim a number like that for a single pay-per-view event.

The Vargas fight doesn’t even make the top five in the list of de la Hoya’s best sellers.

Five times in his career, he eclipsed the 1 million mark, including the all-time pay-per-view record of 2.4 million for his May 2007 split decision loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr.

The end of his career offers a stretch where he won more often than he lost – four of his last seven, dating back to the disputed decision loss to Shane Mosley in their 2003 rematch. All six of his career losses came against fighters not only locks for the International Boxing Hall of Fame, but more than likely to gain acceptance in their first year of eligibility.

Simply put, he never lost to anyone he wasn’t supposed to.

Few fighters in boxing history can make the same claim, with even fewer not leaving behind a laundry list of unfinished business.

When all was said and done, Oscar de la Hoya took part in a lot more fights than the number that didn’t take place. Of the fights that could be made, he pursued them far more often than he opted to look elsewhere. Once he hit his prime, there was never a scenario where he wouldn’t enjoy the upper hand at the negotiating table. Yet for all of the fights he pursued, he batted 1.000 in eventually putting ink-to-paper.

At his best, Roy Jones Jr was and is still criticized for major fights that never took place at super middleweight and light heavyweight. Stepping up in the twilight of his career served as a deflection and also helped bolster his popularity. But it was the lack of marquee matches he aggressively pursued while at top that for more than a decade resulted in his talent far exceeding his box office value.

If and when Floyd Mayweather Jr decides to return to the ring, awaiting him are a slew of welterweights he never managed to get around to facing during his stay atop the division. Never mind the number of challenges he forever left behind while at junior welterweight. It was for that reason that he struggled to generate box office interest of any kind prior to his road win against Arturo Gatti.

Sure, a million and one excuses can be offered as reasons why such voids were left behind for both Jones and Mayweather. But while both are eventual unanimous ballot candidates for the Hall of Fame, it stands to reason that more questions then answers remain while both were in their prime.

For better or for worse, there is little more that could’ve been asked of Oscar de la Hoya. After you get past the nitpicking, you realize that Oscar de la Hoya served as the face of the sport for a good reason.

Met with oft-unwarranted criticism and exceedingly high expectations throughout his 16-year career, rare was the occasion when he didn’t deliver. He didn’t always win, but there was at least one event for every year in which he was a professional fighter in which the boxing world was forced to – but also willingly – took notice.

In an era in which players spent more time nibbling around the edges and looking for every considerable angle and loophole to exploit, Oscar de la Hoya simply played the game according to the playbook he was presented.

Jake Donovan is the Managing Editor of Boxingscene.com and a voting member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Contact Jake at JakeNDaBox@gmail.com.