Remember how critical Oscar De La Hoya was of Floyd Mayweather for accepting a fight against Conor McGregor? He spent the weeks leading up to the fight ripping Mayweather left and right. But it sounds like he’s preparing to essentially do the same thing, if you believe some comments he made on a radio show on Monday.
De La Hoya was a guest on the debut episode of Golden Boy Radio with Tattoo and the Crew when he revealed that he has been "secretly training" to make a comeback in the boxing world. It’s been about a decade now since his last fight, but the 44-year-old De La Hoya either has something that he still wants to prove or he got wind of all the zeroes on the check Mayweather collected for fighting McGregor. So it seems he wants to get back into the ring—and it seems he wants to do it against none other than McGregor, who he called out on the radio show.
"You know I’m competitive," De La Hoya said, according to ESPN.com. "I still have it in me. I’ve been secretly training…I’m faster than ever and stronger than ever. I know I can take out Conor McGregor in two rounds. I’ll come back for that fight. Two rounds. Just one more [fight]. I’m calling him out. Two rounds, that’s all I need. That’s all I’m going to say. You heard it on Golden Boy Radio. Two rounds, that’s all I need."
There are a lot of factors at play here that lead us to believe De La Hoya isn’t actually serious about fighting McGregor. For one, "you heard it on Golden Boy Radio" leads us to believe he’s just doing this to hype up the radio show. He’s also calling out McGregor of all people, which suggests he’s trying to maximize the amount of media exposure this "comeback" gets (can’t blame him for that—it’s obviously working!). And above all else, the fact that he’s been away from the ring for so long leaves us skeptical about his intentions here.
But who knows? We still have a hard time believing that the Mayweather/McGregor fight actually happened after all of the buildup to it. So we wouldn’t even be surprised if De La Hoya finessed his way into a fight with McGregor. Question is: Would anyone pay to see it? The response this receives could ultimately determine whether or not De La Hoya continues with his "secret training" that suddenly isn’t so secret anymore.
