Retirement deals costly blow to boxing

You won’t find Oscar De La Hoya listed near the top of any account chronicling the best boxers over the last century. He doesn’t belong close to the legends of Robinson and Ali and Armstrong and Louis.

He wasn’t in their league. He wasn’t close.

But there is another and arguably more important list to consider today, and De La Hoya should forever exist near its peak.

A list of rescuers.

If he didn’t save boxing, De La Hoya certainly was the defibrillator that kept its heart beating the last decade. He was like Magic Johnson and Larry Bird in a 1979 NBA defined by all sorts of image problems. He was the 1998 home run chase in baseball, only without steroids. He kept alive a sport that for years has seemed a few more nails away from its coffin being permanently shut.

Boxing won’t miss his skill in the ring nearly as much as it will his appeal, which caused such a broad section of mainstream fans to pack arenas or purchase pay-per-view packages. He was boxing’s matinee idol, its Clark Gable in shorts.

That he retired Tuesday known more for being a worldwide attraction than part of the conversation about the all-time greats didn’t seem to trouble De La Hoya.

Think about it: How upset would you be if your fights sold 14.1 million pay-per-view buys for nearly $700 million? It makes sleeping at night a little easier.

“I say, ‘Thank you for watching me and making me an attraction and for believing in me and for being there,’ ” he said. “I had an opportunity to face many world champions. A lot of them, I won. Some, I lost.

“But my satisfaction comes from trying to accomplish the impossible. Not many people do that. If people want to remember me as an attraction, I’m glad I gave a lot of people a lot of entertainment.”

Charisma is a tough feature to own. Ali had it. Michael Jordan. Joe Namath. Wilt Chamberlain. Julius Erving. The magnetism to stop traffic. The presence to quiet a room.

De La Hoya defined it. He lost four of his last seven fights and yet people still were happy to fork over their pay-per-view dollars and would have continued doing so had he made the mistake of competing again. It didn’t matter that the undercards of his recent fights often were to the pathetic level of some amateur club.

He was far more than a major draw.

“He was,” longtime friend and business partner Richard Schaefer said, “a one-man franchise.”

Now what?

De La Hoya, 36, said he didn’t completely accept his decision to retire until his wife asked one final time about his plans hours before a news conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday, meaning he either hadn’t watched a replay of his December loss to Manny Pacquiao or still was too dazed and confused from the beating to remember it.

He hung on one fight too long and maybe even more if you remember how many times Steve Forbes’ fist made contact with De La Hoya’s face in May.

But perhaps now that the most predictable retirement announcement of late has been made official, all that charm can keep boxing on the minds of fans while mixed martial arts continues its steady and strong rise.

Boxing needs Golden Boy Promotions, which has surpassed Don King Productions in the field as one of the sport’s leading two companies alongside Top Rank. It needs De La Hoya and his partners to continue signing good fighters and making memorable cards. Now that the boss has more time to devote to the business side of things, maybe those final few nails will be put aside. Maybe the coffin remains ajar. Maybe the guy in charge can even discover a heavyweight who’s not a complete stiff.

“I probably wouldn’t be here today announcing a retirement if I didn’t have something to fall back on,” De La Hoya said. “Being part of the company made this much easier. It wasn’t the primary reason to retire, but it was part of it.”

De La Hoya fought 45 times and succeeded 39. He won 10 world titles in six weight classes. He opposed Julio Cesar Chavez and Pernell Whitaker and Felix Trinidad and Shane Mosley and Arturo Gatti and Ike Quartey and Fernando Vargas and Bernard Hopkins and Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Pacquiao. His bank account today is a fleet of Brink’s trucks. It all produced a great career.

But this is what made him different: In the ring, his reach measured 73 inches. In the sport, it reached globally.

That’s a mighty tough influence for boxing to replace, because unless the next Clark Gable is about to climb through the ropes, the sport Tuesday took a bigger hit than any Pacquiao delivered in December.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at 383-4618 or egraney@reviewjournal.com.