CLASSIC SHOWDOWN: Oscar De La Hoya vs. Bernard Hopkins

Oscar De La Hoya vs. Bernard Hopkins, billed as It’s History, was a professional boxing match contested on September 18, 2004 for Hopkins’ WBA (Undisputed), WBC, IBF, and The Ring middleweight championships, and Oscar De La Hoya’s WBO middleweight championship.[1] After losing the WBA and WBC light middleweight titles to Shane Mosley in September 2003, five-division world champion Oscar De La Hoya decided to move up to the middleweight division to challenge undisputed middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins, who had been middleweight champion for nearly a decade and had not lost a fight in over 11 years. Before the two would fight each other, De La Hoya and Hopkins would first have to get past Felix Sturm and Robert Allen, respectively. In a doubleheader event broadcast by HBO pay-per-view, Hopkins easily defeated Allen by a lopsided unanimous decision to retain his undisputed title, but De La Hoya struggled in his match with Sturm and only narrowly escaped with a unanimous decision (115–113 on all three scorecards) to capture Sturm’s WBO middleweight title (becoming the first six-division champion in boxing history) and officially put his anticipated match with Hopkins on.[2] Many, including Sturm himself, felt that De La Hoya had clearly lost the fight and had been gifted the decision for the lucrative Hopkins–De La Hoya bout to continue forward. Sturm and his promoter filed a protest with the Nevada Athletic Commission in an attempt to have the decision overturned, but commission head Marc Ratner turned it down, stating there was no basis for a review.[3] With Sturm’s protest out of the way, De La Hoya and Hopkins would proceed with their fight and agreed to a catchweight – a rarity for championship fights – of 158 pounds, in order to level the playing fields for the smaller De La Hoya, who had only one middleweight bout to his credit. Because of Hopkins’ size advantage and his vast experience in the middleweight division, De La Hoya, for the first time in his professional career, was considered the “underdog“,[4] with the odds makers in Las Vegas favoring Hopkins at 2–1. De La Hoya, however, was scheduled to make a career high $30 million, while Hopkins would net $10 million, also a career high.[4] The fightThrough the first eight rounds, the two boxers fought a largely tactical, defense-oriented match. Going into the deciding ninth round, Hopkins was well ahead on two of the judges’ official scorecards with scores of 79–73 and 78–74, while De La Hoya held a narrow lead on the third with a score of 77–75. In the ninth, Hopkins began to aggressively attack De La Hoya, and with 1:34 left in the round, sent De La Hoya down with a well-executed left hook to De La Hoya’s liver. De La Hoya crumpled to the mat in pain and made no effort to answer the referee’s 10-count as he was counted out at 1:38 of the round, giving Hopkins the knockout victory.[5] For De La Hoya it was his first knockout loss in his professional career. It also remains the final knockout victory of Hopkins’ career to date. The ten wins he picked up since were all by way of decision.