Oscar De La Hoya: a Tortured Brute Who Was ‘Driven by a Lie’

Oscar De La Hoya comes clean in The Golden Boy, a two-part HBO documentary (July 24) that’s far more revealing, critical, and ambivalent than most like-minded authorized affairs.

Director Fernando Villena’s film is a story of uplifting athletic triumph, intense fame and fortune, and squandered potential. Even more compellingly, it’s an insightful peek into the formative experiences that allowed the decorated boxer to reach the pinnacle of his profession and then tore him apart, resulting in spousal and parental failures, tawdry scandals, substance abuse, and multiple charges of sexual assault. It’s a warts-and-all portrait told by De La Hoya himself, who comes across as a man willing to confront demons that clearly still plague him.

De La Hoya first rose to fame in the ’90s with a backstory fit for a feel-good fairy tale. Raised in tough East Los Angeles by immigrant Mexican parents, he was taught to fight by his ex-boxer father, Joel Sr., and encouraged by his mother, Cecilia, on her deathbed from cancer (at the age of 38), to win an Olympic gold medal for her. When he did just that at the 1992 Summer Olympics, the media transformed the attractive and fresh-faced kid into a celebrity. Upon turning pro, he knew that there was only one nickname that encapsulated his championship boy-next-door appeal: Golden Boy.

De La Hoya’s early career was predicated on this win-one-for-mom narrative, such that one of The Golden Boy’s archival clips features former President George Bush citing it during a public ceremony. Nonetheless, in Villena’s discerning doc, De La Hoya confesses, “I was driven by a lie,” since no such maternal request ever existed.

That’s a stunning admission from the 11-time world champion (in six different weight classes), albeit one that comes to make sense in light of his past. As De La Hoya tells it in close-up black-and-white interviews, he was raised in a community that prized intense machismo, boozy revelry, and keeping kids in line via violence. The bevy of physical slaps and punches dished out by his dad (who cops to as much on-camera) and mom led to what De La Hoya refers to as psychological “disassociation” in which he became numb to pain. At the same time, it also begat a rage that built up inside of him and required an outlet. Boxing, which he was trained to do from a young age, was the vehicle for releasing his fury and sorrow, all of it revolving around his mother, whose face De La Hoya now admits he used to see when he threw punches at his opponents.

De La Hoya details his complicated and traumatic childhood without seeking sympathy, and he’s similarly earnest and matter-of-fact when discussing his ambition, and hunger for money and power, once he hit it big as a professional. He may have resembled a wholesome and cheery hunk on TV and in magazine spreads, but he was also a driven fighter determined to prove that he was the best and more than just a pretty boy.

Those issues came to a head with his initial bout against Julio César Chávez, who in defeat refused to give De La Hoya the respect he deserved and sought. De La Hoya’s second, more convincing TKO win against Chávez silenced the doubters, though it didn’t quell the boxer’s angry heart. Wild carousing and womanizing became the norm, and continued even once he fell in love with actress Shanna Moakler, with whom he had a child—his third, as a surprised Moakler soon learned.

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De La Hoya’s brother Joel, sister Ceci, promoter Bob Arum, trainer Jesus Rivero, childhood friend Eric Gomez, wife Millie Corretjer, and estranged children Devon, Atiana, and Jacob are some of the many individuals interviewed for The Golden Boy, and all of them speak bluntly about the fighter, praising his admirable work ethic, talent, and loyalty, and remarking on his unsavory aloofness, selfishness, and risk-taking both in and out of the ring.

In Villena’s film, De La Hoya denies having ever raped anyone, but he makes no bones about recklessly putting himself in bad situations. Those peaked in 2007, when tabloids ran photographs of him crossdressing (in fishnet lingerie, tutus, and high heels) in the company of Milana Dravnel, a New York City exotic dancer he had been seeing behind his spouse’s back for some time. De La Hoya denied the veracity of these snapshots and hired an expert to verify that they were faked, but in 2011, he reversed course and acknowledged that they were real.

Dravnel states in The Golden Boy that this was a frequent behind-closed-doors pastime for an inebriated De La Hoya and links it back to his relationship with his mother, who she says used to dress him in women’s clothing and whose affection he craved. Despite successfully launching the boxing firm Golden Boy Promotions in 2002, De La Hoya’s increased drinking resulted in further athletic losses (to Bernard Hopkins, Floyd Mayweather Jr., and Manny Pacquiao) that besmirched his once-unsullied career. Today, De La Hoya believes he could have been better as a fighter had he not let his uninhibited lifestyle interfere with his focus. He’s also aware that he fell short as a father, frankly declaring that he let his kids down (something they corroborate in heartfelt new chats) by prioritizing boxing—and partying—above paternal duties.

Rather than ending on an upbeat note of resurrection and reconciliation, The Golden Boy casts De La Hoya as a work in progress, trying to make amends and right his wayward personal and public courses even as he remains tortured by the wrongs done to him at a young age, and those he himself perpetrated on his journey to the top. As such, it’s the rare biopic to feature its subject’s participation and yet not gloss over the uglier aspects of his tale.

De La Hoya says on more than one occasion that he was always more comfortable expressing his feelings to the media than to his loved ones. In that sense, Villena’s documentary is both a confession designed to bring about healing and a further example of the acclaimed athlete’s unhealthy preference for turning to a camera—and his own celebrity reflection—to deal with his real-world problems.

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