De La Hoya retires slowly

LOS ANGELES – Oscar De La Hoya’s farewell tour is beginning at home. He can only hope it doesn’t end there, too.

De La Hoya fights Saturday night against light-hitting Steve Forbes in what is scheduled to be the first of three fights before he calls it a well-done career by the end of the year. It’s a homecoming of sorts for the fighter from East L.A., but merely an appetizer for bigger things later this year against the likes of Floyd Mayweather Jr., and possibly Miguel Cotto.

De La Hoya hand-picked Forbes to give him a fight, and he’s a prohibitive 17-1 favorite to beat the former 130-pound champion in what on paper looks like little more than an exhibition before the home fans. But, as De La Hoya well knows from his near loss to Felix Sturm in another tuneup a few years back, nothing is settled until the fighters actually meet in the ring.

“This is no pushover fight,” said De La Hoya, sounding like the promoter he also is in this fight. “I fell for that trap before. Every fighter I fight goes to a whole new level when they fight me.”

Not too many other fighters have made the millions De La Hoya has, and no other fighters are getting their own statue in front of the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles.

De La Hoya, who has moved past boxing to become a fight promoter and business operator, doesn’t need the money he will make to fight Forbes in the first boxing match on the soccer field where David Beckham occasionally plays for the Los Angeles Galaxy. He owns an office building, newspapers, Ring Magazine, and recently bought an interest in the Houston Dynamo soccer team.

But at the age of 35 he still wants to fight, and wants to go out big in a pair of megafights once his business with Forbes is taken care of.