{"id":291823,"date":"2025-11-18T04:27:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T04:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/291823\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T04:27:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T04:27:07","slug":"oscar-de-la-hoya-fought-over-20-world-champions-but-says-one-man-stood-out-as-the-best-he-faced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/291823\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar De La Hoya fought over 20 world champions but says one man stood out as the best he faced"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oscar De La Hoya<\/a> took on a number of fellow greats throughout his illustrious career, including over 20 world champions.<\/p>\n

\u2018The Golden Boy\u2019 is widely regarded as one of the best boxers of the past 30 years<\/a>, having claimed world honours in six divisions from super-featherweight to middleweight.<\/p>\n

During that time De La Hoya shared the ring with an abundance of legends such as Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao, Julio Cesar Chavez, Shane Mosley, Bernard Hopkins and Pernell Whitaker, but one fighter stood out to him as the best he fought.<\/p>\n

Most boxing fans may assume it to be Mayweather, with the American having retired undefeated with a perfect 50-0 record, but De La Hoya disagrees, as speaking to Ring Magazine<\/a>, he revealed that he viewed Filipino icon Pacquiao as his greatest ever opponent.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would have to say Pacquiao [is the best I faced]. I think his determination, his conditioning, his skill, his power, speed, footwork \u2026 he\u2019s one of the fighters I most appreciated. Mayweather-Pacquiao would have been a lot different [if they\u2019d fought] in their primes. Pacquiao would have beat [Mayweather] easy, absolutely.\u201d<\/p>\n

De La Hoya fought Pacquiao back in December 2008, in what turned out to be the final fight for \u2018The Golden Boy.\u2019 Heading into the bout, De La Hoya was seen as the favourite, but Pacquiao dominated the action on his way to an eighth round retirement win.<\/p>\n

As referenced by De La Hoya, Pacquiao did lose to Mayweather when they collided in May 2015, but the Filipino legend achieved plenty of success away from that,<\/a> including being the only boxer in history to become an eight-weight world champion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar De La Hoya took on a number of fellow greats throughout his illustrious career, including over 20…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-291823","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-boxing","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}