Diego De La Hoya spent years trying to escape his cousin's shadow. With his next fight, he believes he can finally do it

Andrew L. John
Palm Springs Desert Sun
Diego De La Hoya, at left, fights against Jaxel Marrero at Fantasy Springs Casino on April 3, 2017. De La Hoya won on a TKO.

A 2015 silk blue metallic Volkswagen Golf rolls through the streets of Mexicali, Mexico with Diego De La Hoya riding shotgun.

The professional boxer uses his right thumb to scroll through the fight contract his manager just sent him on his iPhone as he heads toward Office Max to print it out. The deal is for what will be the most important fight of De La Hoya’s life, on the HBO pay-per-view undercard of the Canelo Alvarez-Gennady Golovkin super-bout on Sept. 16 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

The matchup, against Coachella’s unbeaten former world titlist Randy Caballero, will also be the most lucrative bout of De La Hoya’s life. But he’s less concerned with the number of zeros on his eventual paycheck than he is about what disrupting Caballero’s 24-0 record will do to for his pro career.

A victory will be further vindication for De La Hoya (19-0) to fight fans who entertain the notion that his rise in the sport has much to do with his cousin and promoter, Oscar De La Hoya, who won an Olympic gold medal in Barcelona in 1992 and followed with 10 world titles in six weight classes before retiring in 2008.

Because of his cousin’s successes, Diego De La Hoya, who trains in Indio, fought through the amateur ranks in Mexico with a target on his back. Kids called him a “paper boy,” implying that his name looked good on paper but that he lacked the substance to be great in the ring. When he won close fights by decision, whispers suggested that of course it had to be because of his connection to his famous cousin.

But it was never talked about – largely because it was widely unknown – that the two cousins had never even met until much later, when Diego turned pro, in 2012.

“Fighting as a De La Hoya is a lot of pressure,” Diego says as the car rolls along. “I’ve had to live up to Oscar since amateurs.”

Diego De La Hoya signs his contract to fight Randy Caballero at the "El Condor" boxing gym in Mexicali where he trained as a child.

The Volkswagen pulls into an Office Max parking lot less than 30 minutes after the contract was sent from Diego’s manager, Joel De La Hoya Jr., Oscar’s older brother. The store’s wifi is down, so unable to transmit the document from his phone to a printer, De La Hoya jumps back into the car’s plush black leather front seat and heads toward an internet café on the south side of town.

Speaking Spanish along the way, De La Hoya, 23, describes this reticent border city of less than a million, where he was born and raised. Adjacent to the lush alfalfa fields of California’s Imperial Valley, it is often known as the most common drop-off for the United States to dump deportees. But in Mexico it’s also recognized for its vibrant boxing community, with more than 20 gyms training hundreds working in the hopes of reaching immortality as the next great Mexican boxer.

De La Hoya’s 5-foot-6, 137-pound frame exits the car at a convenience store and he jogs across the street and into a red brick building. He emerges minutes later with a printed version of the contract, hops back into the vehicle and heads toward El Condor Boxing Gym, where he spent days and evenings as a child.

Once inside the gym, De La Hoya shuffles into a small office. He signs the contract, snaps a photo for Instagram, and sends the document back to his manager.

He takes a deep breath, then exhales as his fight with Caballero becomes official.

After posting the photo to Instagram, De La Hoya sits on a wooden bench inside the old gym and stares at his phone. The overhead lights shine on his short black spiked hair. He scrolls through the commentary on his post, and occasionally grins as he sees disparaging and uplifting remarks from fans that will motivate him through training camp.

The gym, surrounded by abandoned buildings and walls colored by graffiti and topped with rolls of barbed wire, has the feel of an old barn, built of sheet metal and white cinder blocks. The floors are concrete, and duct tape keeps the ropes of the two rings together.

Inside those ropes is where De La Hoya first heard that commentary about his last name and how he’d never emerge from his cousin’s enormous shadow. For years, it seemed never-ending, and it even got to him a few times. He grew angry, and wore those emotions on his sleeve like a tattoo. 

“Diego always had to train more than anybody because of his last name,” said Diego’s father, Pablo De La Hoya. “But Diego won because of his own merit and because of his training and his effort.

“Nobody gave us anything.”

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - MAY 07:  Diego De La Hoya (2nL) celebrates his TKO win with former professional boxer and founder of Golden Boy Promotions, Oscar De La Hoya (3rd L) during the super bantamweight fight at T-Mobile Arena on May 7, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada.  (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

Though it took nearly two decades for them to meet, Diego and Oscar De La Hoya share a paternal grandfather, Vincente De La Hoya, who was born in Durango, a mid-sized city in central Mexico. Vincente was the first boxer in the family, and began fighting as a lightweight in the 1940s.

Vincente’s son, Joel Sr., Oscar’s father, also fought as a lightweight, and moved from Mexicali to Los Angeles to pursue a professional boxing career in the '60s. He was 9-3-1 with six knockouts before he quit to focus on a job in construction.

26 Aug 1992: Oscar De La Hoya shows off his gold medal before a fight between Jesus Cardenas and Zack Padilla. Cardenas won the fight.

When Vincente’s first wife died, he remarried and had more children. Pablo was the second youngest of Vincente’s 16 children between his two wives.

Joel Sr. brought Oscar and the rest of his family back to Mexicali and Durango to visit Vincente and much of his extended family in the early 1980s, but the two sides of the family didn’t see each other often.

“Back when I was probably 6, 7 years old, I remember those trips,” Oscar De La Hoya said. “Then, obviously when I became an amateur fighter who would constantly travel, the traveling to Mexico stopped. But I do have fond memories of that part of my family.”

More:Randy Caballero's search for redemption leads back to Las Vegas against Diego De La Hoya

Of all of Vincente’s many grandchildren, Pablo has an idea who was the favorite. Vincente was proud of Oscar’s accomplishments in the ring, Pablo said, and when Oscar won the gold medal in the lightweight division in Barcelona, he brought it back to Mexicali to show his grandfather.

To the family, Oscar's Golden Boy nickname seemed appropriate. Any boxer from the family who came after him would have to carry the burden of living up to his legacy.

“My father was very, very happy because of the success of his grandson,” Pablo De La Hoya said.

Diego was born two years later, in 1994, the year Oscar won his first world title on his way to becoming a world-renowned boxing superstar.

The two cousins finally met 18 years later.

Pablo De La Hoya never boxed, but he followed Oscar’s career almost obsessively, attending several of his nephew’s fights in person, and recording others on VHS cassette tapes. He played the tapes for Diego, who as a youngster was too rambunctious to sit still for cartoons.

“Diego was a hyperactive kid,” Pablo De La Hoya said. “He had so much energy. He was unbearable. I had to put him in a sport that would bring down his energy level.”

Diego sat with his eyes fixated on the television when Oscar stepped into the ring. Soon, the toddler was mimicking his moves, not knowing his connection to the fighter on the screen.

Pablo bought Diego a miniature punching bag and some boxing gloves when he was four, and the younger De La Hoya began fighting as an amateur at six, in 1999, less than a year after his grandfather died.

Soon, he was competing for regional and national championships, and doing it while others incessantly strategized over how to beat him. Sometimes that meant trying to intimidate him with dirty tactics. Even when he traveled outside of Mexico, he was a marked young man as kids often believed he was the nephew of Oscar De La Hoya because of the more than 20-year age difference between the cousins.

“He’s always had that difficulty, because they always compared him to Oscar and there was always an expectation that he had to be like Oscar,” said Francisco Martinez Obeso, who trained Diego for three years in amateurs. “But I think Diego has always made his own history, because he’s always been dedicated to his training, and with his weight.

“In Mexicali, he’s now Diego De La Hoya – not Oscar’s cousin.”

Even from the early part of his amateur career, those close to Diego could see that the expectations everyone had were what was driving him. Obeso would ask him to do 250 sit-ups, and Diego would do 300. He’d tell him to run two miles – he’d run three. He always gave his trainer a little extra, to prove that he was more than just another De La Hoya.

In 2002, Diego’s mother abruptly left the family and Pablo and Diego moved in with Pablo’s mother, just across the street from Diego’s first boxing gym, where painted murals cover a wall separating the apartment from one of the main arteries pumping cars through central Mexicali. Until two years ago, Diego hadn’t seen his mother in more than a decade.

He left home at 14 to live and train in Mexico City. He called his dad, begging to come home, but Pablo knew that staying was best for him, and believed if Diego came home before he was ready, he’d never feel comfortable calling his brother or his nephews about helping Diego start a pro career. He wanted Diego to earn it on his own.

“That’s what I wanted,” Pablo De Le Hoya said. “I wanted him to lift himself to this stage without help from anybody.”

Diego De La Hoya walks through El Condor Boxing Gym in Mexicali. De La Hoya spent years as a child and winning a national championship at the age of 12.

By the time Diego returned home, at 18, he had 250 amateur fights (239-11) under his belt, and was aiming for the 2012 London Olympics. He wanted to be the second De La Hoya to bring a gold medal in boxing back to Mexicali.

“That was my goal,” Diego says, back inside the Volkswagen.

Mexico’s Olympic committee had other ideas.

Officials organized a national tournament that was meant to determine who would represent the country in London, Diego remembers. De La Hoya won the event, but the committee instead wanted Oscar Valdez, a future world champion who was four years older than Diego and may have appeared more of a sure thing at the Olympics.

De La Hoya beat Valdez in the tournament, but was then told he needed to fight Valdez again just six days later in Mexico City. So he took the three-hour flight, but Valdez didn’t participate in that stage of the tournament, which De La Hoya won again.

Winning another tournament organized by the Olympic committee, De La Hoya figured he had punched his ticket to London. 

The Olympic committee instead told him he needed to stay in Mexico City for two weeks, then he would fight Valdez again. Without seeing Valdez weigh in beforehand to confirm they were the same weight, De La Hoya stepped into the ring one more time with Valdez, and ultimately lost the fight. Valdez was awarded the one spot at the 2012 Olympics that De La Hoya was seeking.

More:Legacy of a champion: Timothy Bradley meant a lot to boxing, even more to the desert

“It was our dream to go to the Olympics,” Pablo De La Hoya said. “That’s what we had been working toward his entire life. We were so close to achieving our goal, but for one reason or another it didn’t happen.”

Mexico’s Olympic committee paid for De La Hoya to travel to Spain to spar with Valdez prior to the Olympics, and promised him an opportunity to represent the country in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

Instead, debuting as a professional sounded more appealing.

At left, Randy Caballero and Diego De La Hoya get to do a "face-off" in Los Angeles as part of promoting the fight.

Pablo and Diego made the decision together to begin Diego’s pro career, but Pablo took his time calling his brother, Joel Sr., now a boxing manager, and his nephew, Oscar, the chief executive of the largest boxing promotion company in the world.

No one from Golden Boy had actually seen Diego fight to confirm he was legitimate. 

They arranged a sparring session two hours from Mexicali, in Coachella with Caballero, who was a 21-year-old unbeaten professional on a world title track. As Diego remembers it, a video recorded much of the session, and it was later posted to YouTube.

According to Pablo, the video displayed the best of a young Diego De La Hoya -- a youthful tactician, who comes forward and mercilessly attacks like an animal, forcing opponents back on their heels.

Pablo didn’t have to convince Golden Boy. He says the video did it for him.

Footage of the session can no longer be found on YouTube, and the two sides disagree on what exactly happened in the ring, but Golden Boy matchmaker Robert Diaz confirmed that the company liked what they saw from the 17-year-old amateur and later offered him a promotional contract.

Diego debuted the following year at MGM Grand Garden Arena prior to Canelo’s fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr.

“Thanks to that video, we got the contract with Golden Boy,” Pablo said.

Adds Diego: “Everything from that sparring session has culminated to this fight.”

Even after proving himself as an amateur boxer, the same expectations and whispers about his connection to his cousin followed him into professional boxing. It started when he debuted against Luis Cosme and followed him to AT&T Stadium and to Argentina earlier this year.

“That has always been a thing for Diego,” trainer Joel Diaz said. “And he fights angry because of it.”

De La Hoya embraces the expectations, but is still longing for the day when boxing will allow him to stand on his own, as he now does in Mexicali, where thousands crowd into bars and restaurants to watch on television whenever he fights.

“The fact that he’s had to work hard for what he has is what’s made him the fighter he is today,” Oscar De La Hoya said. “The perception is going to be that I’ve silver spoon fed him through his career, but that’s not the case. He’s had to work from the bottom up, and that’s the reason why he’s such a mature fighter.

“That’s the reason he’s so hungry, not only to prove to his fans but to also prove to himself that he can do it on his own.”

Diego De La Hoya, at left, fights against Jaxel Marrero at Fantasy Springs Casino on April 3, 2017. De La Hoya won on a TKO.

Diego De La Hoya walks through an open door at a boxing gym in central Mexicali, and is greeted by an old coach, who first met the young De La Hoya when he began training here at six. It’s a one-room gym with concrete floors and white bricks. There’s one small window to the building with no glass in it.

A teenage boy hitting a heavy bag stops and observes. Another nearby holds his hand over his mouth and whispers.

“I thought that place had closed years ago,” De La Hoya says back in the car.

While he's now a respected fighter in boxing circles and in his hometown, the critics, he says, are still evident. Maybe they'll always be there. But with each fight, particularly from here out, he believes he finally has some control over that.

If he beats Caballero and is set up in a world title bout -- as Diaz, the Golden Boy matchmaker, has suggested will happen with a win -- maybe then he’ll get the respect he’s been seeking. Perhaps.

If he wins a world title in the future, that’d be another step toward establishing himself as more than the cousin of a once great champion.

“It would be special,” Oscar De La Hoya said. “It would be special because he didn’t take the same road as I did. Obviously, winning a gold medal opens up a lot of doors.

"Diego had to knock those doors down on his own."

Right now, the younger De La Hoya is somewhere between rising prospect and superstar, between untapped and fulfilled potential. 

He's somewhere between Oscar De La Hoya’s cousin and Diego De La Hoya.

“This fight can change that,” he says.

He exits the car and crosses the street as the sun begins to set behind the border station crossing into the United States.

Diego De La Hoya visits the gym where he spent years as a child. He now trains out of Indio, California. He will fight former champion and Coachella's own, Randy Caballero on September 16, 2017.

Andrew John covers boxing for The Desert Sun and the USA TODAY Network. Follow him on Twitter: @Andrew_L_John. Email him at andrew.john@desertsun.com.

Diego De La Hoya bio

Age: 23

Height/weight: 5-foot-6, 137

Division: Super bantamweight 

Professional record: 19-0 (nine knockouts)

Hometown: Mexicali, Mexico

Trains: Indio Boys & Girls Club

Watch him fight

What: Diego De La Hoya versus Randy Caballero (Canelo-GGG undercard)

When: Saturday, Sept. 16 (PPV broadcast begins at 5 p.m. PST)

Where: T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas

Television: HBO pay-per-view ($79.99)