{"id":904354,"date":"2026-09-25T00:38:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T00:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/904354\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T00:38:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T00:38:08","slug":"oscar-de-la-hoya-reflects-on-the-toughest-fight-he-ever-had-they-would-stop-it-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/904354\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar De La Hoya reflects on ‘the toughest fight he ever had’: “They would stop it now”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oscar De La Hoya<\/a> is hailed as one of the greatest pound-for-pound fighters of all time, and he has revealed which opponent from his stacked r\u00e9sum\u00e9 gave him his toughest fight.<\/p>\n

De La Hoya became boxing\u2019s first six-division world champion<\/a> when he decisioned Felix Sturm to claim the WBO middleweight title in 2004, following on from his success at super-featherweight and all other weights in-between 130lbs and 160lbs.<\/p>\n

Five years later, De La Hoya was joined in his exclusive club by the legendary Manny Pacquiao<\/a>, who had knocked him out just a few months prior to matching his feat and has now been linked to a shock showdown with Shakur Stevenson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite the loss to Pacquiao, another fight came to mind for De La Hoya when naming his toughest, as he told Froch on Fighting<\/a> that it was his 1999 split-decision triumph over Ike Quartey<\/a> that takes that spot.<\/p>\n

\u201cIke Quartey [gave me my toughest fight]. I fought him when he was 34-0-1, nobody wanted to fight him, he was from Ghana in Africa but I fought everybody. I didn\u2019t care. I wanted to fight the very best.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember saying \u2018yeah, I will fight him,\u2019. I told Bob Arum that I would fight him, no problem. He dropped me in the first round, I drop him in the third round, he drops me again and I end up dropping him three times, close fight.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the 12th round, that has to be the most memorable, most exciting, most fun round that I have ever been in. I hit him with 40 punches, unanswered, today \u2013 they would have stopped the fight, but back then they\u2019d let you go until you kill him! That was really the way that it was.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI hit him 40 times, in the ropes, unanswered. I would look at the referee like [he needs to step in]. The final bell rang, we both put our hands up, it felt like Rocky \u2013 it was pretty cool.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat has been the most satisfying, most entertaining but toughest fight that I ever had.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quartey, who had held the WBA welterweight world title prior to his meeting with De La Hoya, moved up to super-welterweight following the defeat but failed to recapture world honours before retiring in 2006 with a record of 37-4-1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar De La Hoya is hailed as one of the greatest pound-for-pound fighters of all time, and he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":904355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":["post-904354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904354","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=904354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/904355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}