It’s been nearly 15 years since a series of images featuring boxing legend Oscar De La Hoya modeling women’s lingerie hit the web.
Whilst at the peak of his professional boxing career, ‘The Golden Boy’ nearly saw everything come crashing down after a hard night of partying resulted in De La Hoya putting on his own personal drag show in a private hotel room. Unfortunately, the pictures from that night didn’t take long to land on the front page of tabloids across North America. A decade-and-a-half later, De La Hoya has openly admitted to posing for the pictures after initially denying it, claiming they were nothing more than photoshopped images of himself in a precarious situation.
As it turns out, the entire situation was nothing more than a setup in hopes of catching some juicy photos of the squared circle megastar. The goal? To extort De La Hoya for millions of dollars. In that regard, the schemers succeeded as ‘The Golden Boy’ admittedly paid to have the pictures kept under wraps, but that didn’t prevent them from leaking the photos anyway. As a result, De La Hoya and his team went to work in hopes of tracking down the women involved in hopes of mitigating the damage.
“I’ll tell you, we got that girl here from New York that leaked those photos,” De La Hoya told Ariel Helwani on a recent episode of The MMA Hour. “I’m not gonna get into it, but we found her somewhere in Costa Rica hiding out and she said the truth. Exactly what happened,” De La Hoya said. “The producers or the director found her somewhere which is incredible because she was literally hiding out.”
De La Hoya also revealed that he has not spoken to the woman in years, nor does he have any interest in doing so.
“This is the woman that took the photos,” he added. “Apparently, there were like three girls there. No recollection. I was loaded. I just can’t remember. I was drugged up. I was drinking this and that. Can’t remember.”
Oscar De La Hoya talks the leaked lingerie photos.#TheMMAHour pic.twitter.com/lYI6dHDt16
— Jed I. Goodman © (@jedigoodman) July 19, 2023
Oscar De La Hoya Has No Regrets About Coming Clean
Before owning up to the images, Oscar De La Hoya and his team had the world convinced that the photos were fake courtesy of an expert who corroborated their story after being coaxed with a stack of cash.
“Oh, yeah. I have a whole machine behind me,” De La Hoya said. “I’m at the peak of my career and we’re like, ‘Holy sh*t, how are we going to make these things disappear?’ These photos. Well, let’s hire this forensic… I don’t know what he was. He was going through everything, pixel [by pixel] and we convinced him with money to say that they were fake. And the world believed it that they were photoshopped. And we were home free. And guess what happens?
“I’m married at the time. My wife is angry at me. She’s fed up with me because I’m left and right cheating on her and this and that. She convinces me to go on national TV and tell the truth. That’s how it happened,” De La Hoya continued. “She wanted me to look like a fool. She wanted to get back at me, and I did it.”
Asked if he has any regrets about owning up to the images, De La Hoya said “no” without hesitation.
“There’s a certain feeling you get when you tell the truth. But what was incredible is that I was so big at the time. Popular and making money, this and that, that I couldn’t do any wrong. I think I sold more pay-per-views because of it which was crazy. You can imagine all the feelings I had and confusion. The guilt and this and that. Those were some pretty confusing times for me.”
