Five title fights in a year? Oscar De La Hoya recalls his memorable 1997

After his momentous victory over childhood idol Julio Cesar Chavez on June 7, 1996, Oscar De La Hoya took the rest of 1996 off. He fought only twice that year. As the calendar turned to 1997, “The Golden Boy” embarked on what was perhaps the most productive stretch of his Hall of Fame career.

In an era when world-class boxers were already becoming semi-annual performers, De La Hoya, the sport’s biggest star, stepped into the ring five times — all world title fights. He notched wins over Miguel Angel “El Mago” Gonzalez, Pernell Whitaker, David Kamau, Hector “Macho” Camacho and Wilfredo Rivera.

While it might have seemed like an arduous grind, especially compared to how often boxers fight in the current era, it was anything but that for De La Hoya, who turned 24 that February.

“Believe it or not, that was actually the easiest year for me in boxing,” De La Hoya tells ESPN. “I actually lived in Big Bear [California] in the mountains where I used to train. I lived there for the whole year. I never stopped training, and you don’t stop training when you don’t have distractions, when you have your whole circle of friends and family that are understanding and support you.

“When you want to make history and fight the best, it makes it easy,” he says of his year-round commitment. “So when you’re fighting once or even twice a year, you have distractions, you have things that you want to accomplish outside the ring. So that year for me in ’97 was the easiest year in boxing.”

While common sense would dictate that fighting less is safer, by limiting the amount of danger a fighter can absorb, it can be argued that fighting with more frequency alleviates another key issue, as boxers who maintain their conditioning year-round can reduce the severity of their weight cuts.

“I never gained more than 10 pounds after a fight,” De La Hoya says. “I was always in shape because I knew I was going back to camp. I was always ready. I just had to sharpen up my tools and take it from there.”

Once he was in the midst of his 1997 campaign, De La Hoya was able to keep his momentum rolling. But he likely wouldn’t have been able to pull it off in such a successful way had it not been for a lengthy recovery period after that Chavez fight.

“I wanted my body to rest. I took my body through hell for three months when I faced Chavez,” De La Hoya says of his 22nd professional contest. “I basically wanted to rest. It was time where the exposure that I received, my celebrity took off to a whole new level. I wanted to exploit it, and rest the body, rest the mind. Going into ’97 was like, ‘Hey, let’s go full steam ahead.'”

His celebrity status drove the public’s appetite for more fights, and De La Hoya was in the perfect mindset to fulfill that desire. Everything De La Hoya did in 1997 was about continuing to build his burgeoning brand. And he succeeded. Four of De La Hoya’s five fights in 1997 aired on pay-per-view, with the Kamau fight on HBO.