Oscar De La Hoya sues promoter Bob Arum

Woman claims that Oscar De La Hoya raped her

The "Fight of the Millennium" goes to Felix Trinidad

Oscar De La Hoya sues long-time promoter Bob Arum.

September 5, 2000 -- In what looks like an on-going legal battle with promoter Bob Arum and Top Rank, Inc, Oscar De La Hoya is taking Arum, his long time promoter of eight years, to court in an effort to break their contract.

Arum said the lawsuit, filed in federal court by De La Hoya, is "one word: despicable."

De La Hoya's attorney, Stephen Espinoza, said the lawsuit seeks only to end the fighter's contract with Arum, which has three years left on it, and does not ask for monetary damages.

Espinoza said the deal was "negotiated at a stage of his career where he gave up way too much" and that De La Hoya attempted to resolve the matter privately before filing suit.

Arum has promoted De La Hoya his entire career, helping the 1992 gold medal winner to become the highest-paid non-heavyweight in boxing history. But there were signs of dissension between the two just after De la Hoya’s June 17 loss to Mosley.

At the post-fight press conference an obviously shaken De La Hoya said, "Everybody, including Bob Arum, makes more money off a rematch which is why I lost, but that just goes to show you how boxing is and I’m going to have to re-think my whole career and what I’m going to do now."

Recently, Oscar also talked about comments made by Arum, regarding retirement, "I was very surprised and disappointed by Bob’s recent comments to the press stating that I should retire from boxing," De La Hoya said. "I am as committed to boxing as I have ever been, and I want my next fight to be a rematch with Shane Mosley. However it would be very difficult to go forward with my career without the unconditional support of my promoter."

It's clear that the association between Arum and De La Hoya has been immensely profitable for both, making De La Hoya the biggest non-heavyweight money maker in the history of boxing.

But the relationship has soured.

"Oscar has not learned how to deal with defeat, and he looks for a scapegoat, and this time the arrow fell on me," Arum said by telephone from Las Vegas. "Our contract is solid." "Oscar knows we have valid contracts and by going public he breached the contract, so he, and the people who put him up to this are subject to damages and they’re going to have to pay a price."

Oscar De La Hoya, who will release his long-awaited music CD in October, is currently involved in another court battle, a financial nature with his former manager/mentor, Mike Hernandez.

Oscar De La Hoya was in another law suit earlier this year by a woman who sued him for sexual assault for an incident that took place years ago in Mexico. That law suit against Oscar De La Hoya have been dropped and the case is officially closed due to lack of evidence.

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