OSCAR DE LA HOYA goes a long way back with Julio Cesar Chavez. He promotes Canelo Alvarez, who roundly defeated Julio Cesar Chavez Junior on Saturday. De La Hoya himself fought Chavez twice, defeating him in 1996 and 1998.
โI beat Chavez the first time, it was huge fight, heโs the legend, heโs the hero,โ De La Hoya recalled.
โI was thinking, โWow, Iโm going to go back to east LA and theyโre having this huge parade.โ I think it was the Mexican Independence parade so Iโm sitting in a convertible car and Iโm sitting on the car and the car starts going on and I see an egg flying and hit the car, boom!โ Iโm like, โOh god, here we go.โโ
He continued, โAnd all of a sudden eggs start flying everywhere and I get hit in the head. It was so funny. I laughed because Chavez, he was the king [and] the eggs were just flying everywhere.โ
But their fight was significant. โIt divided our cultures. It literally did,โ he said. โWe were divided. I remember my family being divided. But you know what the beautiful thing is now is all those people that booed me, that this and that, now they have kids that are born here in the US who understand what I went through. What Iโm proud of the most is that I stuck to my guns and stuck to my roots and always believed Iโm born in the US, Iโm very proud of it and fortunate enough, but I have my Mexican roots. I always stuck with that. Thatโs why this fight was so big. Thatโs why this fight was so important. Our history is going to go down forever.โ