De La Hoya Golden Again, But Undecide on Future After KO Win

LAS VEGAS, May 8, 2006 — -- For months, Ricardo Mayorga tried to get inside Oscar De La Hoya's head with his taunts and his threats. Then, when it came time to fight, De La Hoya went upside his.

Returning from a 20-month layoff, De La Hoya scored a ferocious sixth-round TKO of Mayorga to win a junior middleweight title Saturday night before an adoring crowd of 13,076 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.

It marks the 10th world title in six weight classes that De La Hoya has won and none could be sweeter.

In his last fight, De La Hoya (38-4, 30 KOs) suffered his only knockout loss, on a ninth-round body shot from then-undisputed middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins. But De La Hoya, 33, didn't want to end his career on the canvas and professed all week how important it was for him to go out as a winner and champion.

He succeeded in grand style.

After standing up to Mayorga's wild, initial assault, De La Hoya put on a brutal display.

He dropped Mayorga (27-6-1) with a right hand followed by a huge left hook in the first round. 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.

"I was hitting him with my right hand and he felt the power," De La Hoya said. "No matter what, I was going to stand up to him and let him know right away that I was here to fight. I had to show the bully that I wasn't going to back down."

It was more dominance from De La Hoya in the second round. He threw a seven-punch flurry that sent Mayorga into the ropes in a daze with 30 seconds to go.

Mayorga's only positive moment came in the third, when an uppercut stunned De La Hoya, but De La Hoya had done more than enough to win the round.

For the rest of the fight, De La Hoya fed Mayorga a steady diet of left hooks and right hands, many that landed so easily it was as though Mayorga had never heard of defense.

De La Hoya landed 116 of 264 punches (44 percent), and limited Mayorga to landing just 58 of 333 blows (17 percent).