Oscar De La Hoya

There is a bigger opportunity for Floyd Mayweather Jr. than just winning a boxing match here tonight. Right now, all that matters to him is whether he beats Oscar De La Hoya and, maybe, how. There is no other focus for Mayweather and his camp. This is a huge payday, a moment when he is at the center of the boxing universe, when the ego strokes just keep coming. Finding perspective in the midst of all this is like finding a needle in a haystack. For Mayweather, it has been nonstop.

The younger, faster and more energetic Floyd Mayweather Jr. did what he said he would Saturday night, beating Oscar De La Hoya to the punch often enough to win a split-decision victory to claim his fifth world championship. Fighting in front of a celebrity-packed sellout crowd of 16,200 at MGM Grand Garden Arena, Mayweather Jr.

Well, the world still awaits. Maybe they can save the slogan for the next mega boxing match. In the minds of most of Saturday night's sellout crowd of 16,700 in the MGM Grand Garden, and probably in the view of millions of those watching on pay-per-view telecasts around the world, Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s split-decision victory over Oscar De La Hoya was a bum deal.

\o7L\f7AS VEGAS -- I begin at the end of this story. Oscar De La Hoya is going to be a new father, although he doesn't know it yet. "I think tonight is a good night to tell him," his wife, Millie, says. "He has a lot to look forward to now." It's been an hour since the Russian judge ruled in favor of Floyd Mayweather Jr., and so Oscar loses the 12-round punch exchange at the MGM Grand. Inside his dressing room he and Millie touch fists before they move to a back room and close the door.

Retire, rematch or rethink? Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr. on Sunday began what's expected to be a week, and perhaps beyond, of wrestling with their career options after Saturday night's split-decision victory by Mayweather that forced De La Hoya to part with his World Boxing Council super-welterweight belt, and may cause him to end his stirring 15-year career. "We'll see. I go back [home] to Puerto Rico and talk to my family," De La Hoya said. "It was a great fight.

It took Floyd Mayweather Jr. 12 rounds Saturday night to defeat Oscar De La Hoya during a championship boxing match in Las Vegas. But YouTube users needed only a few hours to knock out HBO's plan for an exclusive rebroadcast Saturday of the pay-per-view fight. The original broadcast featured on HBO's pay-per-view channel was available later in the weekend on YouTube. Some of the fight action seemed to have been culled from a poor-quality foreign-language broadcast.

And the new pay-per-view champion of the world is Oscar De La Hoya. A record 2.15 million buys for De La Hoya's split-decision loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. on Saturday night on HBO Pay-Per-View generated a record $120 million in revenue. Those numbers, released Wednesday, pushed the totals for 18 pay-per-view fights involving De La Hoya to 12.6 million buys and $612 million in revenue, both record highs. Also, no boxer has ever made as much off one fight.

Popular Los Angeles boxer Oscar De La Hoya and partners have tentatively agreed to buy the landmark Sears, Roebuck & Co. building in Boyle Heights. The former champion's Golden Boy Partners real estate development company and another firm have signed a contract to purchase the mostly empty building at Olympic Boulevard and Soto Street, said current owner Mark Weinstein of MJW Investments.

It was an emotional request. Oscar De La Hoya had barely lost the richest boxing match in history by one judge's 12th-round score when he was met by his wife, Millie, telling him she was pregnant with their second child and asking him to end his fighting career. More than three months after his split-decision loss to unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr., De La Hoya, 34, said Friday he has yet to convince his wife that he should fight again but proclaimed, "I'm not retired."

So, the recent news comes that Oscar De La Hoya apparently will keep on punching. And being punched. We had hoped for better. We had hoped that, in a sport in which everybody says they are going to retire and nobody does, De La Hoya would rise above the crowd. We had hoped that, in a sport in which the big money comes and the big money goes, but the most common payoff is brain damage, De La Hoya would rise above the crowd. Part of this is personal.