Oscar De La Hoya
Oscar De La Hoya (IPA pronunciation: [ˈɑs.kɛɹ dɛ.lɑ.ˈhɔɪ.jɑ][1]) (born February 4, 1973) — nicknamed the Golden Boy — is a Mexican American boxer who won a gold medal for the United States Boxing Team at the Barcelona Olympic Games and is considered one of boxing’s all time greats. Oscar De La Hoya became Ring Magazine’s “Fighter of the Year” in 1995 and Ring Magazine’s best “Pound for Pound” fighter in the world in 1997. His fights throughout his entire career have generated a total of almost half a billion dollars in sales alone. During his amateur career, De La Hoya’s record was 223-5 with 163 knockouts. He was the United States’ top Olympic boxing hope when his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She died at age 35. On her death bed, he promised her that he would win an Olympic gold medal.
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Childhood
De La Hoya was born in East Los Angeles, California. At the age of eight he was the youngest fighter to win first place in Freewill games. He never lost a fight for 4 years and 5 months until he met Marco Rudolph, who was the best fighter from Germany at the time. He avenged the loss by winning the gold medal in the Olympics. He had an impressive record in the amateurs with 223 wins, 5 losses and an impressive 163 knockouts, a record matched by only a handful of other boxers in history.
Career
On November 23, 1992, De La Hoya made his pro debut. He went on to win titles in 4 different weight divisions including lightweight, super lightweight, welterweight, and junior middleweight. He also beat former and current world champions Troy Dorsey (TKO 1), Jorge Paez (KO 2), Genaro Hernandez (TKO 6), John John Molina (W 12), Rafael Ruelas (TKO 2), Julio César Chávez (TKO 4, TKO 8), Miguel Angel Gonzalez (W 12), Jesse James Leija (TKO 2), Pernell Whitaker, Hector “Macho” Camacho (W 12), Ike Quartey (W 12), Arturo Gatti (TKO 5), Javier Castillejo (W 12), and Fernando Vargas (TKO 11). His losses include a controversial majority-decision loss to Félix Trinidad and two decision losses to Shane Mosley, a split-decision, and a controversial unanimous decision. He has been stopped once in his career by Bernard Hopkins (KO 9). The fight with Félix Trinidad was the highest selling non-heavyweight pay per view of all-time, selling over 1.2 million buys. [1]
On September 14, 2002, De La Hoya fought his nemesis “Ferocious” Fernando Vargas. Their feud had began when De La Hoya allegedly laughed at Vargas years earlier when Vargas fell into a snowbank. [2]. After fiercely competitive early rounds, De La Hoya seized control of the latter half of the fight. In round 11, De La Hoya dropped Vargas with a left hook. Vargas got up at the count of nine, but de la Hoya finished him with a barrage of punches forcing the referee to stop the fight at 1:48 of round 11 (TKO 11). It was later revealed that Vargas had tested positive for steroids in his post-fight drug test.
On May 3, 2003, as part of the Cinco de Mayo festivities, he retained his WBC and WBA world junior middleweight championships when the corner of former world champion Yory Boy Campas threw in the towel, and officially gave De La Hoya a seventh round technical-knockout win. On September 13, he and former rival Mosley met once again, in Las Vegas, and Mosley took away De La Hoya’s world title belts via controversial unanimous decision. De La Hoya would later demand an investigation into the scorecards. [3]
De La Hoya next challenged Felix Sturm for the WBO world middleweight title on June 5, 2004. He was awarded a controversial unanimous decision, to become the first boxer in history to win world titles in six different weight divisions. All three judges scored the bout 115-113 in favor of De La Hoya. Compubox statistics counted Sturm as landing 234 of 541 punches, while counting De La Hoya as landing 188 of 792. [4]
Middleweight Challenge against Hopkins
After that, he hoped to unify that title with the three other world middleweight championships, held by Bernard Hopkins, on September 18. He lost to Hopkins by a ninth round knockout. A left hand to the body sent him to the canvas, knocking De La Hoya out for the first time in his career. Hopkins was ahead on two scorecards by the scores of 79-73 and 78-74, while a third judge had De La Hoya winning 77-75.[5] De La Hoya made $30 million for the fight and Hopkins, who made only $300,000 in a fight just nine months before fighting De La Hoya, got a minimum of $10 million. It was the biggest payday of Hopkins’s career. Hopkins would later join de la Hoya’s own boxing promotion firm; he owns twelve percent of univision Golden Boy Promotions.
Comeback Against Mayorga
De La Hoya faced WBC world junior middleweight Ricardo Mayorga on May 6, 2006 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
In the opening round, he dropped Mayorga with a right hand followed by a huge left hook. Mayorga rose but walked into another hail of shots and was about to go down for a second time when De La Hoya ripped him with another right hand, but Mayorga grabbed on to De La Hoya to stay up. Mayorga’s only positive moment came in the third, when an uppercut stunned De La Hoya, but Oscar had done more than enough to win the round. In the 6th round, firing punch after punch, De La Hoya dropped Mayorga to his knees, and although Mayorga got up, he was in bad shape. De La Hoya pounced on Mayorga immediately and never stopped firing as Mayorga wilted along the ropes. De La Hoya fired 21 punches, landing the majority of them, forcing referee Nady to step in at 1:25.
Many have thought it would be a close fight because de la Hoya was coming off a long layoff. However, he fought much better than expected and won the bout by a TKO in round 6.
Mayweather Fight
- See also: De La Hoya-Mayweather
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De La Hoya did not fight again in 2006, but recently lost his scheduled May 5, 2007 bout with Floyd Mayweather Jr., who is the recognized welterweight champion and pound-for-pound number one in the world. The fight took place at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. De La Hoya lost his WBC super welterweight title to Mayweather by a split decision. Early Las Vegas odds had Oscar as a 2-to-1 underdog to the younger Mayweather.
Mayweather showed more speed than his opponent but frustrated De La Hoya and the crowd with his continued covering-up and clinching whenever the champion pressed him against the ropes.
The fight was close throughout, with neither man showing dominance. De La Hoya, constantly pursuing a foe that was clearly wary of standing toe-to-toe with the bigger, more powerful champion, tried to back the challenger against the ropes as often as possible in hopes of landing effective power punches.
Oscar, being the aggressor from the beginning to the end, had trouble landing his powerful left hook. He did catch Mayweather with some solid, straight right hands, but diminished the use of his highly effective jab as the fight wore on, and started to give the challenger more and more room to score from the outside.
Mayweather’s elusiveness, accurate power shots, and activity in the later rounds made a big enough impression on two of the three judges in Las Vegas that night to get the win. Mayweather Jr. won the bout by a split decision, winning the title and improving his record to 38-0. The final scores were 115-113 De La Hoya, 116-112 Mayweather and 115-113 for Mayweather.
It has been reported that Oscar will earn at least $25 million for the fight, and Floyd will earn at least $10 million.[citation needed]
De La Hoya became embroiled in controversy when Freddie Roach, who is training him for the Mayweather fight, admitted in a deposition that De La Hoya brought $250,000 in cash in a suitcase and gave it to super featherweight boxing star Manny Pacquiao as an inducement to try to sign him to a promotional contract. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported the story on March 1, 2007, and the Los Angeles Times followed with a report on March 2, 2007.
Amateur Highlights
| Olympic medal record |
- 1990 Gold Medalist U.S. Olympic Cup
- 1990 Gold Medalist Goodwill Games
- 1990 Gold U.S. National Championships
- 1991 Gold Medalist USA vs. Olympic Festival
- 1992 Gold Medalist USA vs. Boxing National Championships
- 1992 Gold Medalist USA vs. Bulgaria
- 1992 Gold Medalist World Challenge
Amateur record: 224-5 with 164 knockouts
Professional Record
| Record to Date | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Won 38 (KOs 30) | Lost 5 | Drawn 0 | Total 43 |
| Date | Opponent | W-L-D | Location | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WBC Super Welterweight Title |
Pay-Per-View History
Rafael Ruelas( 5/95) 330,000 buys = $9.9 million
Genaro Hernandez(9/95) 220,000 buys = $6.6 million
M.A. Gonzalez(1/97) 345,000 buys = $12.1 million
Pernell Whitaker(4/97) 720,000 buys = $28.8 million
Hector Camacho(9/97) 560,000 buys = $22.4 million
Wilfredo Rivera(12/97) 240,000 buys = $9.6 million
J.C Chavez II( 9/98) 525,000 buys = $23.6 million
Ike Quartey( 2/99) 570,000 buys =$25.7 million
Felix Trinidad(9/99) 1.4 million buys = $71.4 million
Shane Mosley(6/00) 590,000 buys = $29.5 million
Javier Castillejo(6/01) 400,000 buys = $16.0 million
Fernando Vargas(9/02) 935,000 buys = $47.8 million
Yory Boy Campas(5/03) 350,000 buys = $17.5 million
Shane Mosley II( 9/03) 950,000 buys = $48.4 million
Felix Sturm(6/04) 380,000 buys = $19.0 million
Bernard Hopkins(9/04) 1 million buys = $56.0 million
Totals: 9,515,000 buys, generating $444.3 million.[2]
Life Outside the Ring
Cover to Oscar de la Hoya’s self titled CD from EMI International. Released October 10, 2000
De la Hoya is one of the favorite boxers of American cable channel HBO, where he formerly produced a popular Spanish-language boxing show called Boxeo de Oro. De la Hoya’s interests outside the ring include architecture, acting, fashion designing, and singing. He designed his own house in Big Bear Lake, California, has one clothing line through Mervyns department stores, and released a Grammy-nominated CD, entitled Oscar de la Hoya. Released through EMI International on October 10, 2000, the self-titled CD is a Latin Pop album with thirteen tracks in both English and Spanish. His singing career was ridiculed in MTV, with the hosts telling him to stick to boxing instead.
He married Puerto Rican singer Millie Corretjer on October 5, 2001, and lives in Los Angeles and Puerto Rico. Their first child, Oscar Gabriel, was born on December 29, 2005, in Puerto Rico. An hour after his loss on May 5, 2007, to Floyd Mayweather, Millie told Oscar that she was pregnant again. This will be Millie’s second child, Oscar’s fifth. De la Hoya has three other children: Jacob (b. February 18, 1998) by a woman whose identity is unknown; Devon de la Hoya (b. November 30, 1998) by former Las Vegas showgirl, Angelicque McQueen, (a great niece of film star Steve McQueen) and Atiana Cecilia (b. March 29, 1999) by actress Shanna Moakler. A Santa Barbara woman brought civil charges against De La Hoya for allegedly raping her at his condo in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, in 1996 when she was 15. De La Hoya denies the rape but says he settled with the woman “for a very low amount of money.”
In the summer of 2004, de la Hoya starred in and hosted a boxing reality television series on Fox and Fox Sports Net titled The Next Great Champ.
In April 2005, de la Hoya and a Southern California real estate developer, Highridge Partners, formed a real estate investment partnership, named Golden Boy Partners, to invest in Latino neighborhoods.
In September 2005, de la Hoya’s wallet was stolen by a pickpocket. The wallet contained a $1 food stamp coupon, a reminder of his poverty-stricken childhood in East Los Angeles which was very important to him.
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Michael Steven Bublé
Michael Steven Bublé (born 9 September 1975) is a critically acclaimed Grammy-nominated, multiple Juno Award-winning Canadian crooner, big band singer and actor. While achieving modest chart success in the United States, his 2003 self-titled album has reached the top ten in Canada, the UK and Australia. In 2004, a live album and video called Come Fly with Me was listed on the Billboard music video charts and reached Australia’s top 40 album charts. He reached commercial success in the U.S. with It’s Time. He currently lives in Vancouver. His third album, Call Me Irresponsible, was released on May 1, 2007
Early years
Bublé was born in Burnaby, British Columbia. He is of Italian descent with dual citizenship in Italy. He graduated from Cariboo Hill Secondary School. Bublé grew up listening to his grandfather’s collection of jazz records. On his website, Bublé highlights the importance of his grandfather in encouraging his musical tastes. “My grandfather was really my best friend growing up. He was the one who opened me up to a whole world of music that seemed to have been passed over by my generation. Although I like rock and roll and modern music, the first time my granddad played me the Mills Brothers, something magical happened. The lyrics were so romantic, so real… the way a song should be for me. It was like seeing my future flash before me. I wanted to be a singer and I knew that this was the music that I wanted to sing.”
Bublé’s grandmother encouraged him to learn the standards that he loved and to enter a talent contest in Vancouver which he won before a later disqualification for being underage. Not discouraged, he won first prize in a Canadian Youth Talent Search at the age of seventeen.
For the next few years, Bublé pursued a musical career without great success. He appeared as Elvis in a Red Rock Diner road show and sang as a star of a musical revue called Forever Swing. He also appeared in an episode of pleth Game in 1996. He recorded a couple of independent albums, one as a present to his grandfather. Bublé received two Genie Award-nominations in 2000 for both songs he wrote for the film Here’s to Life starring fellow Canadian Eric McCormack.
Career breakthrough
Bublé’s career breakthrough came when Michael McSweeney, associate to former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, saw his performance at a business party. Having enjoyed Bublé’s performance, McSweeney was given an album, which he gave to Mulroney and his wife. Bublé was then invited to sing at the wedding of Mulroney’s daughter Caroline in 2000, where he sang Kurt Weill’s “Mack the Knife”. At the wedding, Brian Mulroney introduced Bublé to David Foster, a multi-Grammy award winning producer and a Warner Brothers record executive who had worked with Josh Groban previously. Foster signed Bublé to his ‘143′ record label, producing the self-titled album Michael Bublé in 2000. The album features a range of standards from various eras including “Fever”, “The Way You Look Tonight”, “For Once in My Life”, Van Morrison’s “Moondance” and Lou Rawls’s “You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine”. Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees sang back up vocals on Bublé’s version of the group’s “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?”.
Michael Bublé was released in early 2003 and soon entered the Canadian album charts. Chart success in the UK, U.S., Australia and elsewhere soon followed with the album going Platinum and reaching the top ten of the album charts in the UK and Canada and going all the way to #1 in Australia. The album has reached the top 50 of the Billboard 200 album charts in the U.S. His version of George Michael’s “Kissing a Fool” was released as a single from the album and reached the top 30 of the Billboard Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chart. “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” reached the top 30 of the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart as well. His third single “Sway”, originally performed by Dean Martin, also reached the top 30 of the Adult Contemporary chart, while a Junkie XL remix of the song reached the top 20 in Australia in May 2004.
Bublé won the “Best New Artist” award at the Juno Awards of 2004 and his self-titled album was nominated for “Album of the Year”, but lost out to Sam Roberts.
Bublé released a Christmas EP Let it Snow in late 2003. The title track reached the top 40 of the Antartica singles chart, ironically in mid-summer in that country. He released a live album and video in April 2004 with the video reaching the top 10 of the Billboard video charts. The album also reached the top 50 of the Australian album charts as at the end of April and the Billboard 200 album charts.
Bublé has also appeared in a variety of films in the past few years including his appearance as a karaoke singer in Duets opposite Gwyneth Paltrow and Huey Lewis. He also has appeared in Totally Blonde in 2001 and in The Snow Walker in 2003.
Songs from Bublé’s debut album (”For Once in My Life”, “Kissing a Fool”) were released on the soundtrack for the Ewan McGregor/Renée Zellweger movie Down with Love, but the soundtrack also included a previously unreleased duet with Holly Palmer on the movie’s title theme. The Junkie XL remix of “Spider-Man” from Bublé’s Babalu album was played during the closing credits of Spider-Man 2, and this version was also released as a single.
It’s Time: Bublé goes mainstream
Bublé’s second studio album, It’s Time, debuted as a hugely successful sophomore performance. The album reached number 7 on the Billboard 200 album chart and number 2 on the ARIA Album Charts in Australia. It’s Time also debuted at number 4 on the UK Album Charts. The album features covers of Beatles and Ray Charles songs, and the hit single “Home”.
Bublé can be seen in Starbucks commercials singing his cover of the Jimmy Van Heusen/Sammy Cahn swing standard, “Come Fly with Me” from his debut album, and more recently, ESPN has used “Feeling Good” in commercials for poker tournaments.
Michael Bublé has now sold in excess of ten million recordings worldwide. His popularity continues to grow as he has a massive following across Europe, North America, Australia, Southeast Asia, South Africa and Brazil.
Michael Bublé won four Juno Awards (equivalent of the American Grammy Awards) at the 2006 Juno Awards in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, including “Pop Album of the Year” (It’s Time), “Single of the Year” (”Home”), Album of the Year (It’s Time), and Artist of the Year. He was also nominated for the Juno Fan Choice Award, but did not win. Overall, Michael Bublé took away the most awards at the 2006 Junos.
He is managed by Bruce Allen, who also manages Martina McBride and Bryan Adams.
Bublé has collected some of the best musicians in the world to appear with him, many of which have released albums of their own. In concert, he often features an instrumental number.
On April 4, 2007, Bublé appeared on American Idol, as a last minute replacement to Tony Bennett, singing Frank Sinatra’s “Call Me Irresponsible.” He later joked with Ryan Seacrest asking, “Am I wasting my votes still voting for Antonella Barba?” The next day, members of the media speculated as to whether or not Bublé was intoxicated while on American Idol because of slurred speech and frequent laughing during his performance.
Personal life
Bublé was engaged to long-time girlfriend Debbie Timuss, a stage actor, dancer/ballerina, and singer. Both were in the musicals Red Rock Diner in 1996 and Dean Regan’s Forever Swing in 1998. Timuss was listed as one of the dedicatees in Bublé’s self-titled album Michael Bublé and It’s Time, and as background vocalist on It’s Time. While away in Italy, Bublé co-wrote the hit single “Home” for Timuss. She was also featured in his Home music video. They were later engaged in 2004 and ended their relationship in November 2005. He then dated Grammy-winning Canadian singer Emma Banigan. They met in 2004 at his concert in Toronto. He is now dating British actress Emily Blunt.
Bublé grew up with a best friend from Denmark (’Rasmus’) with whom he celebrated julefrokost quite often. He is fond of Danish Schnapps, familiar with Danish culture and Danish drinking songs, and speaks a bit of Danish, which he mentioned at a concert in Denmark. He is also good friends with Vancouver Canucks goaltender Roberto Luongo.
Source: Wikipedia
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