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International Journal of the History of Sport

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Golden But Not Brown: Oscar De La Hoya and the Complications of Culture,
Manhood, and Boxing
Fernando Delgado

Online Publication Date: 01 March 2005

To cite this Article Delgado, Fernando(2005)'Golden But Not Brown: Oscar De La Hoya and the Complications of Culture, Manhood,
and Boxing',International Journal of the History of Sport,22:2,196 — 211
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 The International Journal of the History of Sport
Vol. 22, No. 2, March 2005, 196 – 211

Golden But Not Brown: Oscar De La

Hoya and the Complications of
Culture, Manhood, and Boxing
Fernando Delgado
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This essay explores the contours of how professional boxing champion Oscar De La Hoya
has been constructed through the popular and boxing press. The analysis points to the
complicated relationships between ethnicity, masculinity and public personae and how
one sporting icon is poised between two communities: the Latino community,
predominantly in the South-west of the USA, and the broader mainstream audiences
for sport and entertainment. The essay explores how De La Hoya’s success and quest for
mainstream acceptance has complicated how his ‘home’ communities react to and
position him as a fighter, media icon, and Latino male.

As so often happens with scholarly writing in the area of media studies, opportunities
for critique and analysis present themselves in the most unexpected ways. In the
present case, my perusal of periodicals for my studies into football yielded an
unexpected result. In the open stacks of the library at Arizona State University I
found a specialist magazine that examines professional boxing. What was remarkable
about this magazine was not the cover that touted a ‘classic’ bout between the
‘Golden Boy’ Oscar De La Hoya and Félix Trinidad (a fight in which De La Hoya
suffered his first professional defeat), but what someone had scrawled across the
image of De La Hoya: a common three-letter epithet typically used to question and
defame the masculinity and heterosexuality of males in the US.
This grabbed my attention, and I began to consider the relationship between De La
Hoya and the various communities who would be interested in his success or failure.
My first impressions were that those with the greatest interest are that diverse
collective known as boxing aficionados or, more broadly, sports fans. However, a
brief exploration of the sporting literature surrounding De La Hoya suggested richer

Fernando Delgado, Minnesota State University. Correspondence to: fernando.delgado@mnsu.edu

ISSN 0952-3367 (print)/ISSN 1743-9035 (online) # 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/09523360500035818
 The International Journal of the History of Sport 197

possibilities, including the exploration of how and why his masculinity resonated
with various communities. Of course, in an analysis of US popular and sporting
media, considerations of De La Hoya’s mediated masculine persona and its reception
cannot easily be disentangled from the related issues of race and ethnicity given his
status as a Mexican American. And so the serendipitous discovery of De La Hoya’s
image with the word ‘fag’ written across his forehead has led to the present
consideration of how his race, masculinity and identity raise interesting questions
about identity, authenticity and the meaning of manliness in perhaps the most
masculine of all sports.

Boxing and Masculinity

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Boxing is one of several global sports that manifest the connections between
masculinity, sport and culture. The British sociologist John Sugden observes that
boxing ‘has proven to be very resistant to female involvement’.[1] Exploring the
question of how and where boxing takes place, Löic Wacquant identifies the boxing
gym as a ‘quintessentially masculine space’,[2] while Varda Burstyn observes that
despite the incursions of female managers, judges and, most significantly, pugilists,
‘boxing is uncontestably a violent sport, and a masculine sport’.[3] The renowned
novelist Joyce Carol Oates claims that ‘" The sweet science of bruising’’ celebrates the
physicality of men even as it dramatizes the limitations, sometimes tragic, more often
poignant, of the physical’,[4] nicely summing up the elemental nature of boxing as a
forum for testing masculinity, will and strength. From these viewpoints boxing would
appear to be an athletic activity designed to test, perform and sustain masculinity,
with the vision of the masculine it engenders a particularly violent and predatory one.
It is common for sporting commentators in the US to refer to boxing as the ‘sweet
science’, but it can be argued that it is at its foundation a ‘manly art’, a site where the
most basic tests for humanity and – tragically and all too commonly – survival of the
fittest are enacted.
Quite apart from what happens in the ring – with the associated violent, military
and masculinist metaphors of bombs thrown, the hammering of the opponent and
the obligatory allusions to destruction, punishment, and battering – are the lurid tales
of boxers’ lives outside the ring. Indeed, it may be the aggressive and deviant
masculine behaviour of the likes of Mike Tyson in their everyday life that inflate the
masculinist dimensions of how we perceive and culturally construct such ‘bruisers’ in
the ring. John Sloop’s analysis of Mike Tyson, a now notorious pugilist once
perceived to be ‘unable to behave in any but an animalistic fashion both in and out of
the ring’,[5] demonstrates the contiguities between the persona of an athlete and the
presumptions about behaviour and athletic prowess and style. As Sloop explores
media and marketing constructions of Tyson from the early 1990s, when he was
tellingly known as ‘Iron Mike’, he finds a boxer and a man whose dimensions have
been conflated and flattened. As a result of these processes, to most people Tyson is
‘not only unable to control his aggression, but he is also mechanistic, a killing
 198 F. Delgado
machine that cannot be unplugged. Indeed, Tyson has no heart; he punishes without
guilt.’[6]
The lurid visions of the predatory Tyson are linked to other constructions and
media articulations of boxers over the course of several generations. Indeed, the
violence and malevolence attached to Tyson are of the sort that have been attributed
to champion boxers such as Sonny Liston, Jake La Motta (immortalized in Martin
Scorsese’s Raging Bull) and Roberto ‘manos de piedra’ (hands of stone) Duran.
Indeed, most professional boxers would be happy to possess and be renowned for
most of these characteristics, at least in the ring. Lest we forget, even before Tyson
became infamous for his aggression and wilful disregard for humanity, many in the
worlds of boxing and sport more widely made him famous precisely because these
traits were present, most especially in the ring.
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While each culture may have its own notions of grace and style, both in and out of
the ring, cultural conceptions of pride and power generally overwhelm the more
effeminate and, to further extend the stereotype, hysterical dimensions of boxing.
Even now when we see female boxers, including the daughters of Joe Frazier and
Muhammad Ali, on the undercards of major professional bouts, they are curiosities
and their fights precursors to the main event: men punishing each other in the hopes
of submission, knockout or the judges’ decision. Whatever the role of female boxers,
be it as managers, judges, fans or ring girls, the essence of boxing remains a contest
typically reduced to two men beating each other. Typically, the denouement of a
boxing match involves a predator stalking his prey, and the exceptions to this rule,
like the ‘wars’ involving the evenly-matched Marco Antonio Barrera and Erik
Morales or the spirited battles between Arturo Gatti and Mickey Ward, prove to be
even bloodier tests of a boxer’s ability to absorb and mete out physical punishment.
While a cross-generational, cross-cultural undertaking that examines boxing and
masculinity would be a worthy project, this essay’s focus is narrower, centring on
how masculinity is performed in and out of the ring and how it is perceived and
circulated by boxing fans and the print media. The focal point is Oscar De La
Hoya, a Mexican American boxer whose rise from an amateur to the professional
ranks has been remarkable and is reflective in his nickname, ‘Golden Boy’. As a
an Olympic gold medallist and several times world champion across a number of
weight divisions, we might expect that De La Hoya’s masculinity and identity
would not be questioned because of his success in the most violent of sports. But
as so often happens, mere championship performance in the crucible of public
scrutiny does not always satisfy our projected visions of who or what a fighter, let
alone a champion, should be in and out of the ring. Mining similar territory,
Gregory Rodriguez observes that De La Hoya’s own efforts in relation to media
images have complicated the ways in which audiences, consumers and particularly
fans have received De La Hoya as a fighter and as a man.[7] What follows then, is
an exploration of constructions of De La Hoya as both fighter and man and how
these have much to tell us about identity politics in the US in relation to sport,
Latinos and masculinity.
 The International Journal of the History of Sport 199

The Rise of the Golden Boy

Since the 1992 Olympics De La Hoya has been a significant figure in boxing,
becoming among its most popular and marketable athletes. For a decade he has been
in the headlines, both as a boxer of marketable skill and as a celebrity always on the
verge of being the Latino version of Muhammad Ali or perhaps Sugar Ray Leonard.
De La Hoya’s rise from the Eastside Boxing Club, located in an area of Los Angeles
where ‘if you want to be respected . . . you want to be able to fight[8] to the height of
the boxing world and a position as the public face (to both Spanish-speaking and
English-speaking audiences) for a variety of consumer products, was nothing short of
meteoric.
De La Hoya’s professional career has been dotted with signature and championship
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bouts across several weight divisions, including symbolically significant contests

against fellow Latino and Latin American boxers. He has served as the poster-boy for
professional boxing in the US, a fresh-faced, reluctant assassin whose own rise
coincided with the collapse of Mike Tyson. In short, he has accomplished what other
great champions of the recent past have done, most notably Sugar Ray Leonard: he has
crossed over into the mainstream US media and entertainment culture.[9] That he has
been the first Latino boxer to do so this is significant both as an accomplishment
during a period where boxing has suffered from commercial decline and because it is
consonant with a general heightened awareness of Latino cultures and celebrities. On
several levels, then, De La Hoya is a crossover success according to the US imaginary,
having risen from the mean streets to heights of wealth and celebrity.
Regardless of what other endeavours De La Hoya has more recently pursued – and,
significantly, they are the more ‘feminine’ activities of singing and acting – his
enduring fame stems from his ability to beat opponents in the ring. De La Hoya, a
product of the predominantly Latino and underclass neighbourhoods of East Los
Angeles, proudly Mexican American and part of the tradition of East Los Angeles
boxers, has been the Golden Boy of his area, of the Mexican American community
and of professional boxing. Yet, despite his roots and his success both in and out of
the ring, De La Hoya occupies an interesting position as a subject constructed by and
reflected in both the sports and entertainment media as well as the Latino
community, particularly the Mexican American communities across the US South-
west. Located at the crossroads between ethnic and cultural pride and assimilation,
De La Hoya represents the potential of Latinos in the US and, by extension, the
potential to reproduce discourses that coincide with ‘the new cultural racism that
informed the agenda of conservative administrations [at both the state and federal
levels] of the late twentieth century’.[10]
De La Hoya participates in media, sport and promotional discourses that provoke
disquiet among certain Latino sectors, particularly fight fans, who perceive him to be
neither brown enough nor man enough within the terms established by his ‘home’
community. De La Hoya has not matched the expectation that he would be part of a
line of Latino fighters, extending from North to South America, who exhibit the
 200 F. Delgado
preferred predisposition for an aggressive, hard-punching fighting style in the ring
and a nearly stereotypical machismo – silent, brooding, aggressive – outside the ring.
Instead, De La Hoya has often opted for a more clinical and dispassionate style in the
ring and a winning and decidedly sunny and engaging demeanour in public. In
contrast to the tradition of Mexican and Mexican American fighters who prefer one
speed and one direction – all out and moving forward – De La Hoya’s style and
demeanour have suggested another way. As his biographer, sports journalist Tim
Kawakami, writes:

The legends, like Julio Cesar Chavez and the Panamanian Roberto Duran and
Pipino Cuevas, all were blunt battering rams, willing to wade into an opponent and
break him apart, one body shot at a time. For the Mexican-American community
of East LA, that was machismo incarnate. Boxing was not art, it was survival.
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Winning was about persevering, and about ferociousness, and it translated to the
street brawls and the boxing gyms and the six-year-old kids.[11]

This was not the way for De La Hoya, who from an early stage eschewed physical
confrontation and the inflated postures of the macho. De La Hoya, Kawakami writes,
‘was, he admits it himself, a madre’s boy[12] In short, from early on he violated
cultural expectations of Latino males and Latino boxers in particular.
The contrast between expectation and performance is summarized nicely by Toby
Miller’s analysis of reactions to De La Hoya’s 1999 title bout loss to Felix Trinidad:
‘Well ahead on points, De La Hoya, whose appeal rests on beautiful style and
beautiful looks, elected to move away from his opponent in the closing rounds, lest
he be hit hard. The controversial decision against him was thought to have been a
punitive reaction to this ‘‘unmanliness’’.’ [13] The challenge, then, is to understand
the ways in which De La Hoya’s persona, in the ring and outside it, challenges
notions of Latino masculinity and identity. De La Hoya is complicit in and subject to
the processes that construct and reify his cultural positioning vis-à-vis Mexican
American boxing fans and, by extension, Latino fans, potential fans and media
consumers. Seemingly the embodiment of everything that would make him a heroic
male, De La Hoya instead is often the target of critiques that question his masculinity
and his relationship to an authentic Mexican American identity, as a man and a
fighter. In the following pages I will examine the construction of Oscar De La Hoya as
a Mexican American boxer and how he provokes a discussion of Latino-ness,
masculine identity and, by extension, sexuality.

Masculinity in the US: Hegemony and Beyond

The construction of masculinity in the US, particularly through the mass media and
sport, remains predominantly white and heterosexual. Messner, Dunbar and Hunt
observe that certain cultural and gendered characteristics endure when television
provides coverage of sport: ‘The Televised Sports Manhood Formula provides a
remarkably stable and concrete view of masculinity as grounded in bravery, risk
 The International Journal of the History of Sport 201

taking, violence, bodily strength, and heterosexuality.’ [14] Such masculine virtues
are typically ascribed to Anglo-American males and reify common cultural and
sporting myths, all of which is understandable given the central role that sports and
athletics play in US culture.
Built upon the foundation established by the work of Connell and other scholars
who have explored sport and masculinity,[15] analyses of masculine identity,
particularly those of sporting figures filtered through the mass media, have remained
consistent in their critique of the articulation of a hegemonic masculinity, a culturally
idealized form of maleness.[16] As such, these ideal males ‘may reside in fantasy
figures or models remote from the lives of the unheroic majority’,[17] and can be
effectively transmitted via channels of the mass media and as forms of popular
culture. In the sporting arena, the efforts of various scholars have suggested how
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mediated sports provide a powerful vehicle for constructing and disseminating

preferred notions of male identity, subjectivity and behaviour.[ 18]
In relation to male athletes, scholars have argued that specific characteristics of
hegemonic masculinity emerge. Trujillo’s analysis of the now retired Major League
Baseball pitcher Nolan Ryan echoes the elements described by Messner, Dunbar and
Hunt. Trujillo notes that ‘media representations of sport naturalize hegemonic
masculinity when they depict its features as conventional or acceptable’.[19]
Furthermore, they cement the connection between cultural values and audiences/
viewers because ‘media representations personalize hegemonic masculinity when they
elevate individuals who embody its features as role models or heroes worthy of
adoration and emulation’.[20] The embodiment of certain myths, values and
identities that are communicated through the mass media and represented by athletes
such as Nolan Ryan simultaneously reflect and articulate preferred cultural discourses
of masculinity. Ryan particularly fits the mould of the hegemonic masculine male
athlete and the attendant cultural, racial and sexual identities important in the
American mythos of the male. Ryan embodies athletic excellence and dominance at
the same time as he iconically represents the rugged individualism and mythology of
the Western cowboy.
As a result of their embodiment of masculine virtues and their reflections of
mainstream formulae for the ideal male, articulations of hegemonic masculinity
inevitably restrict ethnic and racialized males, as well as females and gay men. For
example, Orbe notes that black males on US television are subject to restricted codes
of representation. In the field of athletics even a figure such as Michael Jordan, whose
fame and popularity would suggest a transcendent quality, remains ‘extremely Black
and his race is a definite signifier of his spectacle’.[21] In the US what is expected
from our masculine sport heroes is that they be white and heterosexual. (Here I refer
to mainstream cultural constructions that define and naturalize masculine variants as
preferred or natural and, concurrently, ‘depict alternatives as unconventional or
deviant’.[22]) As a result, Nolan Ryan embodies the idealized male hero – silent,
powerful, menacing, successful – a character rooted in rural America. Coincidentally,
Ryan is from Texas. The Westerner who went to the big city and achieved fame, a
 202 F. Delgado
replication of countless and overlapping myths of success and manhood found in the
American imaginary. Ryan’s positioning reflects the power of Western mythologies of
cowboys and frontiersmen as he becomes the sporting equivalent of the strong, silent
and morally upstanding hero in the line of figures such as Gary Cooper.
Nevertheless, while this masculine ideal, suffused with traditional and conventional
Anglo-American heterosexual male coding, may still exert hegemonic force in the US
imaginary, ruptures and alternatives are becoming more prevalent. Miller and
Donaldson correctly note the shifting cultural practices and commodity preferences
that complicate the persistence of a hegemonic masculinity, particularly in the heavily
commodified world of mass media athletics. Miller, surveying the symbolic and
material dimensions of spectator sport, observes that ‘spectator sports reference all
the complexities of contemporary capitalism, played out over the public bodies of
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headlined workers. Sports’ gender politics at the elite level today are from a
functionalist world of total domination by straight, orthodox masculinity because of
the niche targets that these commodified signs are directed toward (such as straight
women and gay men).’ [23]
Despite a growing general awareness of the exploitative potential that media
producers identify when they discover new audiences and market segments, the
presence of the hegemonic male continues to cast a large shadow over the male types
that are constructed in and through the mass media and popular culture. There is
little doubt that media and sporting discourses are conflated to deploy the hegemonic
position that roughly parallels the shadows of class, gender and racial and sexual
orientation as these construct a centre and a periphery in any society. Therefore,
while what is hegemonic may have shifted, media sociologist Robert Hanke takes
note of how media representations of masculinity seek to maintain control and
continually reposition the preferred male in the centre.[24] When variations appear
at last to have ruptured the hegemonic construction of the masculine, we should be
wary since ‘hegemonic masculinity changes in order to remain hegemonic’.[25]
Elsewhere, Hanke also argues that in the face of alterations and challenges to stable
and conservative (or traditional) masculine stereotypes certain variations remain
dominant.[26]
Hanke raises important questions regarding the continuities of masculinity in
contemporary culture while directing scholars to engage in cross-disciplinary
scholarship that destabilizes modes of inquiry. In the process of analysing masculinity
on US television, Hanke suggests that the inquiries themselves challenge a stable
centre of hegemonic masculinity, unmasking and revealing hidden discourses and
assumptions regarding masculinity that, in the US at least, are unquestioningly
accepted. But, while noting that there is a socio-cultural power of hegemonic
masculinity that can be challenged by ethnic and racial males, women and gay men,
we should also note that social and demographic shifts may point to particular
hegemonic masculinities within so-called sub-cultural groups, exactly those
communities that exist on the cultural, economic and political periphery of the
United States. The presence of alternative hierarchies of masculine identity is hinted
 The International Journal of the History of Sport 203

at in the works of Miller and Donaldson and, with regards to Latinos, explored by
scholars representing a range of academic interests.[27]
In the US long-standing ethnic communities, infused by continuing waves of
immigrants and connected through various geographical, communicative and
technological means, can develop alternative mainstreams, existing in opposition
to or defiance of the Euro American, hegemonic mainstream. Latinos, for example,
may have the cultural and media resources to articulate masculine identities whose
attributes are sustained by cultural myths, by self-stereotyping, by traditions and
rituals and by the more obvious impact of contemporary popular culture forms
disseminated via the mass media. In many cases such alternatives come with
attendant disturbing elements that also exclude and diminish feminized and gay
identities. Nevertheless, the global and mediated realities of the present suggest that
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groups such as Latinos in the US have the capacity to engage forms of popular and
everyday culture that reinforce alternatives to the US mainstream while generating
preferred and dominant values, identities and discourses.

Masculinity of a Different Colour

De La Hoya, then, is measured against two masculine conceptions. Measured against
the Euro American variation, he falls short only to the extent that his Latino-ness
stands in the way. His demeanour, his language and his aspirations all reflect a
mainstream, middle-class value system. Journalist Mark Kriegel entitled his essay on
De La Hoya ‘The Great (Almost) White Hope’ and noted that among the crowd at
the Riviera (Los Angeles) Country Club ‘Oscar De La Hoya looks like anything but
what he is’.[28] But this is what lies at the crux of the issue of De La Hoya’s identity:
is he a Mexican American boxer who has done well and fulfilled a now well-worn tale
of athletic achievement or is he a cultural turncoat who has little in common with his
culture and community? Indeed, one of the claims lodged against De La Hoya by
many is that he has forgotten his cultural (and class) roots. In the aftermath of his
victory over Mexican hero Julio Cesar Chavez, De La Hoya was seen by many as a
‘sellout’ to ‘those who accuse him of having abandoned his Mexican roots’[29]
because of how he fought and who he associated with in the afterglow of his victory.
Injecting culture and ethnic identity destabilizes hegemonic masculinity,[30] and
the relationship between De La Hoya’s public persona, media constructions of him
and the interplay with Latino communities and voices raises the issue of masculinity
and brownness. Interjecting a value and identity system associated with cultural
others and their experiences as ‘hyphenated’ Americans disrupts Euro American
hegemonic masculine identities, and we are led to alternatives that invite connections
to other cultural and even national experiences. These connections link to preferences
for particular gendered identities: in the sporting sphere De La Hoya was expected to
be more hombre and less papi chulo.[31]
In the case of Mexican American masculinity there is significant carryover from
cultural expectations brought from Mexico and rearticulated in the US. Gutmann
 204 F. Delgado
notes that the macho male came to play an important role in nation-building in
postcolonial Mexico, while in the US ‘machismo has been associated with negative
character traits not among men in general, but specifically among Mexican, Mexican
American, and Latin American men’.[32] Yet, as Gutmann suggests, in a more
complicated reality where masculinity and machismo are less prevalent or clearly
defined, the shadows of historical and cultural preferences remain. For example,
focusing on the legacy of Oscar Lewis’s The Children of Sanchez,[33] Gutmann
demonstrates the linkage of machismo to characteristic traits of the Mexican male
identity: never surrendering, struggling to the death and being courageous.
Echoing the themes Gutmann raises in his analysis of The Children of Sanchez, the
film Internal Affairs offers a more recent expression of these characteristics. In the
film a malevolent and corrupt Euro American police officer sucker-punches the
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heroic Latino internal affairs investigator in an elevator. Unrelenting and struggling

to retaliate, the Latino officer takes a beating rather than surrender. The villain sneers
at his beaten but struggling opponent, noting that the problem with Latin fighters is
that they never know when to give up, which is why they get spent so early in their
careers. This stereotype appears to have cultural resonance on both sides of the
border. Though we might debate the everyday existence of such males, the cultural
imaginations of communities on both sides of the border often project some or all of
this stereotype onto its heroes, including athletes. The shadow of the Mexican macho
as an expression of what Andrew Rivera terms ‘exaggerated masculinity’[34] remains
a part of Mexican and Mexican American projections and may be considered an
expression of resistance to the hegemonic white male ideal in the US.[35]
The emergence of a vibrant US Latino popular culture encourages the presence of
preferred cultural and gender attributes – even if they are mythologized, idealized or
highly stylized. Operating in tandem with the mass media, these potentially unreal
visions of Latino identity can be embodied by sports figures that are larger than life
yet still resonate with fans’ aspirations and romanticized visions of heroes, icons and
cultural ideals. Consequently, the connection between manliness and sexual and
physical power, fearlessness, and the ability to withstand and even seek out pain, is
visible in the construction of Latino boxers, regardless of the side of the border on
which they fight or reside. In the Latino imaginary, the characteristics Gutmann
found in The Children of Sanchez are inflated and overlaid on boxers who, at given
moments, become the embodiment of national and cultural pride and identity.

A Matter of Style and Manliness

Recently, John Gambadoro, a commentator on a radio talk show in Phoenix,
Arizona, observed that De La Hoya ‘doesn’t fight like a Mexican’.[36] While such an
observation reeks of stereotyping, it is also a fairly constant dimension of the
construction of De La Hoya. Indeed, one of the challenges that confront De La Hoya
is the presumption that he is not Mexican enough, and the evidence for this is found
in several locations, including his boxing style. For Latino boxing fans this perception
 The International Journal of the History of Sport 205

of De La Hoya is partly cultural (they have tended to prefer the brave puncher who
takes a hit to deliver one) and the legacy of the many great Latino champions who
have exhibited this style, such as Carlos Zarate, Bazooka Limon and Julio Cesar
Chavez. Indeed, the reverse can be seen in the figure of Mexican flyweight champion
Miguel Canto, a great fighter known for his tactical and defensive skills but not as
revered as those mentioned because ‘he didn’t have a popular style’ among his
natural constituency.[37] A consequence of this preference is that when a fighter like
Roberto Duran claims ‘no más’ (no more), the failure is not that he is beaten by a
superior fighter, but that he fears the beating and runs away from the fight. For many
boxing fans, particularly Latino and Latin American, fights that occur in the centre of
the ring, with both opponents punching furiously until one is demonstrably and
violently beaten, are the true measure of greatness and, by extension, manliness.
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Boxing does, of course, allow for different tactics in order to survive and win: one
can be defensive, dance or box with style as opposed to being a puncher who can take
a punch. Yet what is a preferred fighting style can vary across national, cultural and
ethnic boundaries. It is exactly those preferences, and his variance from them, that
bedevils Oscar De La Hoya, his masculine persona and his Latino identity. It is
presumed that Latino fighters will be aggressive, direct and unrelenting in the ring.
De La Hoya’s conundrum is that he is neither a primitive male nor an unthinking
automaton willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of cultural preference, at least not
to the degree that some fans require. Since his rise during the 1992 Olympics, De La
Hoya has ‘floored boxing audiences with his fighting skills’.[38] Those skills enabled
De La Hoya to win an Olympic gold medal and become a professional world
champion within five years, culminating in his being labelled the mythical ‘pound for
pound’ best fighter in the world.[39] Yet he never has been known as a puncher, a
fighter in the tradition of so many great Latin champions. Thus despite his success,
the ‘Golden Boy’ has critics who question both his masculinity and ‘Mexicanness’,
and for Mexican American fight fans in particular the two are not unrelated.
Kawakami, who explains Julio Cesar Chavez’s appeal to Mexicans on both sides of
the border, neatly sums up the dichotomies between the ‘Golden Boy’ and a ‘Mexican
Man’:

Chavez was exactly what Mexicans loved in fighters – to hit you, he would allow
you to hit him with everything you had. Then he would batter you, body part by
body part, until, at the very end, you were swallowing your own blood and dizzy
from the experience. To the people of those streets, to the immigrant Mexicans and
the fight fans of the Latino populace, Chavez stood for Mexican pride. When
Chavez bled, they believed, he bled for them.[40]

In contrast, Kawakami writes of the impact on De La Hoya of injuries sustained in a

fight with John John Molina:

He was nearly in shock – not from the punches, or from the hurt, but from the
bumps on his face, from the temporary scarring, marring his ultimate treasure.
 206 F. Delgado
Never again, De La Hoya swore, I will never allow myself to get hit like that – to get
marked like that – ever again. His face was too precious to be a punching bag.[41]

This contrast nicely summarizes some of the reasons for Latino (particularly male;
females have always loved De La Hoya) antipathy toward De La Hoya and the
attendant intimation that he is neither Latino enough nor man enough to command
their respect. So if De La Hoya was the fantasy of teenage girls and the dream of
marketers seeking crossover value, he has not been the idol or hero of Latino boxing
fans who wanted a man, a man who was one of their own.
Indeed, De La Hoya defines his own view of the boxer in ways that run counter to
the tradition of the puncher-fighter: ‘When you fight, it’s not all about being mean,
being that ugly tough-guy boxing image, because people are watching you. . . . I don’t
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want to be a fighter that has fought fifty fights, worked hard all his life, and has
nothing to show for it in the end. I am going to keep this smile.’ [42] While most of
us would laud De La Hoya’s intentions and his view of the professional boxer, it is
exactly such opinions that are not within the domain of preferred constructions
among many fight fans, including Latinos. In some sense, the clinical and perhaps
even sterile approach that De La Hoya seems to adopt contrasts with the basic but
passionate personae that have been associated with the greatest of Latino and Latin
American fighters. In recent memory the closest parallel to De La Hoya’s approach to
the ring may be the Panamanian champion Alexis Arguello, but even he was still
inclined to have ‘wars’ with his opponents.
As a result of De La Hoya’s clinical and distant approach to fighting, there has
clearly been a struggle over identity and meaning among Latinos when considering
De La Hoya. While he is a star and a sporting icon, many Latinos remain critical of
his style as a measurement of his Latino masculine identity. Fellow Southern
California fighter and nemesis Fernando Vargas calls De La Hoya a coward and ‘my
son’ in repeated visits to the nationally syndicated Jim Rome radio programme.
During the January 2002 press conference for their forthcoming spring bout, Vargas
taunted and attacked De La Hoya, claiming he was ‘not a real Mexican American’ and
Vargas’s supporters ‘began chanting, in Spanish, that De La Hoya was a sissy’.[43]
Such criticisms appear to trouble De La Hoya, who has remarked: ‘I might turn it in
soon, depending on the fans. They would appreciate me, especially the younger ones,
if I looked more like a fighter. . . . The girls like me. Their boyfriends would like to see
me lose.’ [44]
This essay began as part of a larger, comparative project exploring popular culture
and Latino identity. However, having run across the aforementioned defaced cover
photo of De La Hoya, I was struck that the picture of an earnest, attractive Latino
champion (and would-be role model) should provoke and reflect such cultural
displeasure and disdain. Whoever that author was he (or she) neatly, if petulantly,
summarized many Latinos’ perceptions of De La Hoya. The style and flair De La
Hoya shows in the ring, even the middle-class values and detached approach with
which he discusses boxing, suggest that many Latinos will remain suspicious of his
 The International Journal of the History of Sport 207

credibility both as a boxer and as a Mexican American male – though, ironically, his
recent losses and return to the ring have helped his image.[45] This change in
perception is perhaps a reflection that the Latino boxing narrative must include
suffering and loss so that the manly characteristic of aguante (the ability to withstand
punishment and pain) can be revealed. Sports Illustrated’s boxing writer Richard
Hoffer remarked that in the aftermath of the first Julio Cesar Chavez fight ‘[t]he
perception that De La Hoya is concerned more with the aficionado’s appreciation of
skill than with the casual fan’s appetite for raw meat haunts him. It is this view of De
La Hoya, partly, that makes him unpopular with the Latin crowd, which prefers fights
to be proving grounds for machismo . . . instead of chess matches.’ [46]
It appears that the approach of standing and punching that De La Hoya has
employed since then, which has coincided with losses to Felix Trinidad, Shane
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Mosley and Bernard Hopkins, is more consonant with fans’ expectations, but clearly
these tactics has not proved to be a successful formula in the ring, though ‘his defeat
[to Trinidad] was compensated with his resurgences as a celebrity and sex
symbol’.[47] Moreover, in the face of multiple defeats, De La Hoya has received
much more respect than when he methodically destroyed Chavez, the Mexican hero
and embodiment of machismo.
Despite his recent shift in style and degree of success, it was during the period after
his significant victories over Chavez and other Latin fighters, when his fame was at its
zenith, that De La Hoya’s boxing style became a matter of interest to those who noted
how it differed from a traditional Latin approach. As Hoffer noted at the time, De La
Hoya ‘is a champion whose fans sometimes jeer him for the prettiness of his
fighting’[48] and even among boxing pundits De La Hoya has been ‘suspect as a
pretty-boy dilettante’,[49] unwilling to commit himself totally to boxing, in and out
of the ring. Therefore, despite the fact that for much of his career De La Hoya has had
nearly all the attributes to become a hometown champion ‘to some in his own town
he was no hero’.[50]

Questions of Class, Ethnicity and Masculinity

Since the articulation of machismo and Latino masculinity is related to underclass
and marginalized life in the US, it is logical that many Latinos, particularly those
in his former East Los Angeles neighbourhood, would react negatively to De La
Hoya’s public persona and his pursuit of mainstream economic and cultural
success. Appearances on talk shows and in advertisements on the Spanish-
language television networks Univisión and Telemundo notwithstanding, Ring
Magazine suggested De La Hoya has yet to ‘win the allegiance of male Hispanic
fans. They still have a hard time rooting for a boxer who lives in silk-stocking Bel
Air, California, and seems way too comfortable in a tux.’ [51] One Los Angeles
radio commentator suggested that ‘they [Latinos in East LA] believe he’s turned his
back on the barrio, feel he’s trying to live the white life. He belongs to a country club.
He plays golf.’ [52]
 208 F. Delgado
Beyond the confines of boxing, De La Hoya is a media figure who is described as ‘a
well-groomed marketing machine’,[53] a ‘clean-cut champion’[54] armed with a
‘pretty-boy persona’.[55] Though ‘his skin is supermodel flawless, his eyes hypnotic
and deep brown and his ebony hair fussed into a sleek do that seems to say ‘‘sexy yet
manly’’ ’,[56] such attributes do him little good in capturing the hearts of his people
– the men of the Latino communities of the South-western US. And yet, ‘the women
in the crowd keen loudly and unfurl banners proposing marriage’.[57]
Thus while De La Hoya still sees himself as part of his home community and
inextricably linked to Latinos, regardless of social class, his pursuit of crossover
success puts him in a difficult position. How does he seek access to the mainstream,
whose media clearly recognize and articulate that he is Mexican American, while
maintaining his sense of authenticity and a connection with his community? How
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does he, in the hip-hop vernacular, ‘keep it real’ when Latinos and members of other
ethnic groups, in their pursuit of mainstream success and acceptance, risk criticism
for being ‘too white’? It is clearly a struggle, particularly for De La Hoya, who
possesses ‘a devastating one-two punch for marketers – fast fists and sex appeal’,[58]
and often finds himself ‘in a no-win situation’ in and out of the ring.[59] This
situation is not helped by his pursuit of leisure activities such as golf and the
associations of his moving to Bel Air rather than remaining among his people, which,
for some, mark him as more white than brown. To be fair, De La Hoya cannot be
held responsible for the paucity of Latino heroes or role models in the US, nor can he
be held responsible for narrow or intractable social constructions of what Latino
should be. Nonetheless, he has contributed in some measure to his predicament, as
he has made choices about his image and, especially, about the mediation of his
persona.
No one can deny that Oscar De La Hoya is a supremely talented and brave pugilist.
He is also personable and ambitious. He is ‘Mexican by his blood, American in his
inclinations; barrio by birth, country club by preference . . . [who] will again be called
an aspiring white boy, charged with selling out and abandoning the Community’.[60]
Yet it would seem that despite his roots and all his talent, Oscar De La Hoya – East
LA’s golden boy – will never be Mexican enough nor man enough to command the
respect and affection of his community. Such is the conundrum of attempting to
bridge the space between vibrant ethnic communities and a persistently powerful
mainstream culture in the US. The mainstream is clearly a powerful magnet, but in
its pull it can sever the relations between members of a community, particularly
within communities that persist on the margins of a given society and culture.

Conclusion
Despite boxing commentators describing De La Hoya as ‘the complete package’ who
has ‘obliterated some excellent opponents’,[61] he remains caught in a liminal space.
For some, his greatness in the ring is matched by his social skills outside the ring. Yet
as he pursues mainstream success on his own terms, he finds himself caught in the
 The International Journal of the History of Sport 209

web of associations that marginalized and ethnic communities make to define

authentic identities. Kawakami and Price have taken stock of flaws in De La Hoya’s
image, some of which put him uncomfortably close to the person of Mike Tyson.[62]
Nevertheless, De La Hoya is largely seen as a safe and positive Latino role model by
the mainstream Euro American media and the mainstream Latino media outlets in
the US. Perhaps it is because of his success and his quest for social acceptance that
Latinos question his Mexican-ness, his manliness. Whatever the case may be, it is a
futile exercise to attempt to define one way of being a boxer, a man, a Mexican.
However, for media and cultural scholars, it is a boon to know that members of
communities inevitably, if unnecessarily, employ litmus tests to prove the worth and
identity of a man. It gives us something to explore as we inquire into the ways in
which we discursively create and attach meaning to identity.
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Notes
[1] J. Sugden, Boxing and Society: An International Analysis (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1996), p.192.
[2] L. Wacquant, ‘The Social Logic of Boxing in Black Chicago: Toward a Sociology of Pugilism’,
Sociology of Sport Journal, IX, 2 (1992), 234.
[3] V. Burstyn, The Rites of Men: Manhood, Politics, and the Culture of Sport (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1999), p.166.
[4] J.C. Oates, On Boxing (Hopewell, VA: The Ecco Press, 1994), p.9.
[5] J.M. Sloop, ‘Mike Tyson and the Perils of Discursive Constraints: Boxing, Race, and the
Assumption of Guilt’, in Aaron Baker and Todd Boyd (eds.), Out of Bounds: Sports, Media,
and the Politics of Identity (Indianapolis, IN: University of Indiana Press, 1997), p.108.
[6] Ibid., p.122.
[7] G. Rodriguez, ‘Boxing and Masculinity: The History and (Her)story of Oscar de la Hoya’, in
Michelle Habell-Pallan and Mary Romero (eds.), Latino/a Popular Culture (New York: New
York University Press, 2002), pp.256–62.
[8] T. Kawakami, Golden Boy: The Fame, Money, and Mystery of Oscar De La Hoya (Kansas City,
MO: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 1999), p.17.
[9] B.M. Johnson, ‘The Great Hispanic Hope – for Advertisers’, Business Week, 15 Feb. 1993), 122.
See also N. Mailer, ‘Street Fighting Man’, Harper’s Bazaar, June 1996, 136–9, 150 for evidence
of De La Hoya’s appeal to non-Latino audiences and, by extension, marketers and advertisers.
[10] G. Rodriguez, ‘Saving Face, Place and Race: Oscar de la Hoya the All American Dreams of US
Boxing’, in John Bloom and Michael Nevin Willard (eds.), Sport Matters: Race, Recreation and
Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2002), p.289.
[11] Kawakami, Golden Boy, pp.18–19.
[12] Ibid., p.19.
[13] T. Miller, Sportsex (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2001), p.9.
[14] M.A. Messner, M. Dunbar and D. Hunt, ‘The Televised Sports Manhood Formula’, Journal of
Sport and Social Issues, 24 (2000), 392.
[15] R.W. Connell, Masculinities (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995). See also H. Brod and M.
Kaufman (eds.), Theorizing Masculinities (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1994); and
M.S. Kimmel, ‘Rethinking ‘‘Masculinity’’: New Directions in Research’, in Michael Kaufman
(ed.), Beyond Patriarchy: Essays by Men on Pleasure, Power, and Change (Toronto: Oxford
University Press, 1987), pp.235–49.
 210 F. Delgado
[16] C. Cheng, ‘Marginalized Masculinities and Hegemonic Masculinities: An Introduction’,
Journal of Men’s Studies, VII, 3 (1999), 295–315.
[17] M. Donaldson, ‘What is Hegemonic Masculinity?’, Theory and Society, XXII (1993), 646.
[18] M.A. Messner, Power at Play: Sports and the Problem of Masculinity (Boston, MA: Beacon
Press, 1992) and N. Trujillo, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity on the Mound: Media Representations
of Nolan Ryan and American Sports Culture’, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, VIII, 3
(1991), 290–308.
[19] Trujillo, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity’, 293.
[20] Ibid., 293.
[21] D. Kellner, ‘Sports, Media Culture and Race – Some Reflections on Michael Jordan’, Sociology
of Sport Journal, XIII, 4 (1996), 462.
[22] Trujillo, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity’, 291.
[23] Miller, Sportsex, p.10.
[24] R. Hanke, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity in thirtysomething’, Critical Studies in Mass Communica-
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tion, VII, 3 (Sep. 1990), 231–48.

[25] Ibid., 245.
[26] R. Hanke, ‘Theorizing Masculinity with/in the Media’, Communication Theory, VIII, 2 (May
1998), 183–203.
[27] See R. González (ed.), Muy Macho: Latino Men Confront Their Manhood (New York: Anchor
Books/Doubleday, 1996); and J.E. Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the
Performance of Politics (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).
[28] M. Kriegel, ‘The Great (Almost) White Hope’, Esquire, Nov. 1996, 79.
[29] Ibid., 93.
[30] See M. Donaldson, ‘What is Hegemonic Masculinity?’; and C. Cheng, ‘Marginalized
Masculinities’.
[31] A. Sandoval-Sánchez, ‘Latinos and Cultural Exchange: De-Facing Mainstream Magazine
Covers: The New Faces of Latino/a Transnational and Transcultural Celebrities’, Encrucijada/
Crossroads, I, 1 (2003), 13. My colleague Dr Bernadette Calafell of Syracuse University
explains in a personal communication that the term papi chulo ‘has been used in popular press
such as Latina magazine to refer to the ideal Latino man – well-rounded, intelligent,
successful, and good looking – our finest man. On the other hand it has also had negative
connotations that make it synonymous with being a Casanova or with machismo.’
[32] M.C. Guttmann, The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1996), p.227.
[33] O. Lewis, The Children of Sanchez: Autobiography of a Mexican Family (New York: Random
House, 1961).
[34] A. Rivera, ‘Remembrance and Forgetting: Chicano Masculinity on the Border’, Latino Studies
Journal, VIII, 1 (1997), 37.
[35] M. Baca Zinn, ‘Chicano Men and Masculinity’, Journal of Ethnic Studies, X, 1 (1982), 29–44.
[36] Gambo and Ash Show, KGME Radio, 29 Jan. 2002.
[37] S. Farhood, ‘Is Chavez the Best Mexican Fighter Ever?’ Ring Magazine, Aug. 1990, 36.
[38] L. Rivera, ‘Amor, Amor, Oscar De La Hoya Sings Songs of Love’, Latina, Feb. 2000, 78.
[39] N. Collins, ‘Ringside,’ Ring Magazine, April 1998, 4.
[40] Kawakami, ‘Golden Boy’, p.220.
[41] Ibid., p.156.
[42] R. Velazquez, ‘Golden Boy’, Hispanic, Oct. 1995, 30.
[43] B. Plaschke, ‘They’re Ready to Rumble and Roar’, Los Angeles Times, 17 Jan. 2002, Pt. 4, 1.
[44] Mailer, ‘Street Fighting Man’, 150.
[45] R. Hoffer, ‘L.A. Glory’, Sports Illustrated, 26 June 2000, 54–6.
[46] R. Hoffer, ‘Cold-blooded’, Sports Illustrated, 17 June 1996, 70–3.
 The International Journal of the History of Sport 211

[47] Sandoval-Sánchez, ‘Latinos and Cultural Exchange’, 13.

[48] R. Hoffer, ‘The Right Stuff’, Sports Illustrated, 22 Feb. 1997, 54.
[49] R. Hoffer, ‘The Pugilist and the Professor’, Sports Illustrated, 10 June 1996, 80.
[50] A. Tresniowski and J. Schnauffer, ‘Moving on up’, People Weekly, 20 Jan. 1997, 93.
[51] I. Goldman, ‘Exclusive Interview with Oscar De La Hoya’, Ring Magazine, Dec. 1998, 37.
[52] Tresniowski and Schnauffer, ‘Moving on up’, 94.
[53] R. Hoffer, ‘Class Dismissed’, Sports Illustrated, 27 Sep. 1999, 57.
[54] H.J. Lalli, ‘Showcase: The Boxer’, The New Yorker, 9 Jan. 1995, 52.
[55] R. Hoffer, ‘Oscar Time’, Sports Illustrated, 21 April 1997, 71.
[56] L. Ali, ‘He’s Singing in the Ring’, Newsweek, 23 Oct. 2000, 78.
[57] R. Hoffer, ‘Oscar Worthy’, Sports Illustrated, 22 Sep. 1997, 44.
[58] J. Reingold, ‘I Can Lift the Name of Boxing’, Business Week, 7 July 1997, 115.
[59] Goldman, ‘Exclusive Interview’, 36.
[60] Kriegel, ‘The Great (Almost) White Hope’, 75.
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[61] T. Graham, ‘The Pound-for-Pound King!’ Ring Magazine, April 1998, 40, 41.
[62] Kawakami, Golden Boy; and S.L. Price, ‘He Says he’s a Gladiator. . .,’ Sports Illustrated (19 June
2000), 80–86, 89–90, 92.