This was not a little boy to intimidate.   The most vivid memories of his childhood are not of domination and triumph, but of tears, and his stories almost always end with him crying, in his room, afraid of something.  Afraid of everything.

At his third birthday party, in 1975, his parents invited all of the cousins and friends over and put up a colorful piñata, tied to the ceiling.  Little Oscar of course had seen piñata's before, seen plenty of them.   But he still froze in panic as the sight of the colors and the prize, burst into tears, and rushed to his room and shut the door.  His parents tried to get him out to his party, but he stayed in bed.

A few months later, his older brother, Joel Jr., put some huge gloves on Oscar's hands and pushed him at a young cousin.   Oscar promptly got smacked in the face, immediately started crying, then ran home.

"Before I was a fighter," De La Hoya recalls, "I remember being put into a fight with my brother and little cousins....I would just keep to myself.  But I remember this one little bully in our block, he would beat everybody up and I was like the last one standing.  Because I never fought him.  The would throw me in all the time.  And I would end up crying at the end....I'd always lose."

Before I was a fighter...I'd always lose.

(Excerpt paragraphs 3-7, page 19 from Golden Boy:  the Fame, Money and Mystery of Oscar De La Hoya by Tim Kawakami)

Reproduced by permission of Andrews McMeel Publishing.

Author List | Bibliography by Sport

Other Boxing titles

Dolan, Terrance. Julio César Chavez. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1994.
LATINO JUVENILE Biography Chavez

Menard, Valerie. Oscar de la Hoya. Childs, MD: Mitchell Lane, 1998.
796.83092 De La Hoya Biography

Taylor, Robert. Oscar de la Hoya : boxing's boy wonder. Vero Beach, FL: Rourke Enterprises, 1993.
JUVENILE Biography De La Hoya

Torres, John Albert. Sports great Oscar de la Hoya. Springfield, NJ: Enslow, 1999.
JUVENILE Biography De La Hoya