“I fought her and her name is Oscar ‘Golden Girl’ Dela Hoya” – FULL FIGHT | Oscar De La Hoya vs. Floyd Mayweather | HO

The weigh-in, attended by record crowds and celebrities like Michael Jordan, Eddie Murphy, and Denzel Washington, is described as pandemonium. The Challenger, Pretty Boy Floyd Mayweather, steps on the scales at 150 pounds, ready to face the reigning and defending WBC super welterweight champion, the Golden Boy Oscar De La Hoya, at 154 pounds.

If Mayweather is truly desperate—and nothing else explains his fanaticism—this is good news back in the boardrooms. His fight with Oscar De La Hoya on Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Vegas will probably be boxing’s last gasp, surely the last bout that can produce anything like coast-to-coast appeal or, let’s say, two million pay-per-view buys. Unless De La Hoya is fighting, which has been seldom of late and is about to become never, the sport exists on the fringes, particularly in the U.S. The lower weight classes are dominated by Hispanic fighters, and their fights, dramatic as they might be, are marketed almost exclusively in the West, Southwest and some big cities elsewhere. The heavyweight division, which traditionally galvanized the nation, is similarly dominated by foreign fighters, but with the added disadvantage that they’re not very good.

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Robert Beck/SI

In short, De La Hoya–Mayweather just might be boxing’s last megafight, the last event of its kind, the last time a bout features two widely known athletes and is a topic of national interest. There will be boxing, and lots of it will be quite good, but there may never again be a time when boxing penetrates this country’s indifference and causes a viral, all-consuming hubbub.

The reasons for boxing’s decline, or at least its transition to a specialty sport, have been outlined in these pages before. The Olympics, once a springboard to stardom, no longer provide boxing any exposure in this country. It’s been a long time, perhaps since De La Hoya won his gold medal in Barcelona in 1992, that kids in this country could be goaded into a gym with the promise of glory. Globalization, which ought to be good for boxing, a traditional melting pot, has instead turned it into a nightmare of competing ethnicities, with niche marketing now the norm.

Oscar De La Hoya Responds to Floyd Mayweather, ‘Never Resort to Hitting Women’

The feud between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Oscar De La Hoya escalated when the two boxing icons exchanged words on social media on Thursday.

After saying Canelo Alvarez was the “easiest fight” of his career earlier in the day, Mayweather took to Twitter on Thursday to post a previously leaked photo of the Golden Boy in fishnet stockings, including “I fought her and her name is Oscar ‘Golden Girl’ Dela Hoya” in the caption:

Mayweather defeated De La Hoya in the ring via split decision in May 2007.

De La Hoya took exception to the post and referenced Mayweather’s troubled past:

Mayweather was sentenced to 90 days in jail after pleading guilty to domestic violence in December 2011, and in 2014 Deadspin noted Mayweather’s involvement in “at least seven separate physical assaults on five different women that resulted in arrest or citation.”