Oscar after the bell: De La Hoya readies for life outside the ring.

THERE'S a favorite story Oscar De La Hoya likes to tell.

After winning the gold medal in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, he returned to his gritty East Los Angeles neighborhood and was overwhelmed with offers.

Just 19 years old, he was paid $200,000 for his very first fight. Yet by the end of 1993, after making millions in his first 11 pro bouts, he had just $7,000 in the bank.

"I was just spending and not looking out for my money. I said to myself, 'This is not right. I have to have the perfect team around me,'" recalled De La Hoya. "It was very vital to make that change. I was self destructive."

It took a few years, but the Golden Boy of boxing seems to have gotten it right.

As he approaches what is likely to be the biggest fight of his career this Saturday against middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins, De La Hoya is not only at the top of the boxing world but making inroads as a promoter and businessman as well-with plenty of help.

The 31-year-old stands to make $30 million in what could be the most lucrative non-heavyweight bout in history, adding to at least $150 million in career earnings that have provided him with multiple homes, expensive cars and other luxuries that only big money can buy.

But more noteworthy in a sport where a fighter such as Mike Tyson earns millions but still ends up broke, De La Hoya has built up a growing business empire as he enters the twilight of his life in the ring.

Most visible is "The Next Great Champ," the reality show on Fox Television that premiered last week to poor ratings. De La Hoya appears in it and is also executive producer, along with his business partner Richard Schaefer.

There also is his Golden Boy Promotions, which was formed three years ago and has a stable of two dozen fighters and shows on HBO, Univision's Telefutura and ESPN2. De La Hoya said it will be the vehicle through which he plans to "clean up" boxing when he retires, as he has repeatedly vowed to do over the years--to considerable skepticism. Other investments include a Los Angeles office tower and a group of Latino newspapers, and he's considering making a run at the self-storage business.

Far from going it alone, De La Hoya has assembled a team led by Schaefer, a former top UBS Warburg banker. The team also features a former Arthur Andersen accountant and a longtime West Coast boxing promoter--all of whom handle day-to-day operations. That leads to the inevitable charge that De La Hoya may be little more than a front man.

"I think more people in business circles view athletes who try to make the transition to the business world very skeptically," said sports consultant David Carter, who gives De La Hoya credit for the team he has assembled. "But at least Oscar was astute enough to entice the other guys."

The right moves

Visiting De La Hoya's compound in Big Bear, which includes a small gym where he trains for most of his fights, would give few clues that the boxer is anything more than a sports superstar.

The front lawn is mostly taken up with a putting green and sand trap where the boxer tries to perfect his 12-handicap near two large signs for "De La Hoya Drive" and "Golden Boy Avenue." In the rear sits a custom doghouse in the same faux log cabin style as the main buildings.

But the atmosphere on the 67th floor of the US Bank Tower at Golden Boy Enterprises LLC, parent company for his multiple businesses, has a more corporate feel, even with the title belts and other memorabilia on display.

There, boxing promoter Roy Englebrecht is putting together what will be at least 34 fight cards this year, to be staged from the Grand Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles to Corpus Christi Arena in Texas.

"Oscar has been able to open more doors in three years than I was able to open in 20 years or would ever be able to open," said Englebrecht, who sold his promotion business to De La Hoya in December 2001 and now serves as its chief operating officer with a 10 percent stake in the business.

The purchase of Englebrecht's company was a milestone in De La Hoya's efforts to make himself over as a promoter. He began by convincing Schaefer, 43, to leave his post as deputy chief executive of UBS' North American private banking business.

The Swiss native and sports fan met De La Hoya on a Palm Desert golf course eight years ago. The pair hit it off and stayed in touch until 2000, when the boxer dumped his manager and asked Schaefer to work for him.

"I was a bit surprised, but I felt immediately we can make a good team," Schaefer recalled. "I said to him, 'Here is my 1099. Here is what I made at the bank.' I didn't ask for less, and I didn't ask for more."

De La Hoya matched the unspecified amount and Schaefer joined the parent Golden Boy operation as chief executive. The first priority was to clean up what Schaefer saw as a financial mess that had been left behind. That included settlement of a $62 million palimony lawsuit filed by Sharon Moakler, a former Miss USA and Playboy Playmate who is the mother of one of two young children De La Hoya has had out of wedlock.

Also settled were lawsuits by his former manager, Mike Hernandez, and from an 18-year-old woman who accused De La Hoya of raping her at a Cabo San Lucas hotel room in 1996. De La Hoya was never charged and the case was settled out of court.

De La Hoya also was able to get out from trader his own contract with leading boxing promoter Bob Arum, after a bitter legal battle over a lawsuit the boxer filed in U.S. District Court.

That allowed the new team to focus on maximizing the revenue of the remaining fights in De La Hoya's career--leading to a mending of fences with Arum, who now co-promotes his fights. It also led to the purchase of Englebrecht's promotion company, an obvious way to get into the business.

"The best way to go about it is to find an acquisition, so we could all learn what the promotion business was all about," Schaefer noted. "I said, 'The first year we are going to learn, so soak it all up.'"

Leaps and bounds

With Englebrecht at the helm, the business gradually took off with a plan to capitalize on De La Hoya's popularity among the growing Latino market in the U.S.

The company actively recruits Latino fighters in the lower and middleweight categories that can be showcased at events under De La Hoya's banner.

Golden Boy negotiated a deal with HBO's fledgling HBO Latino cable channel to put on a monthly Boxeo de Oro series. It also got four dates in 2003 on Telefutura, a network of Spanish-language giant Univision Communications Inc., and another eight this year. ESPN2 is also broadcasting a show this year.

"We thought Oscar De La Hoya would be a terrific face for the network, and he was someone who we wanted to be in business with," said Kery Davis, senior vice president of programming at HBO sports. "Oscar is a huge star."

Golden Boy is co-promoting the Hopkins fight with Arum, who at 73 remains a leading figure in the boxing game. It also will co-promote a Nov. 27 pay-per-view event with him, among a dozen or more fights it has scheduled for the remainder of the year.

Arum is among the more outspoken skeptics of De La Hoya's commitment to promotion, believing that the boxer is more likely to jump at acting roles. De La Hoya, who a few years ago dabbled with a singing career that included an album nominated for a Latin Grammy, has signed up with the William Morris Agency.

His non-boxing excursions include endorsements. Just this year, Mervyn's launched an Oscar De La Hoya casual and active wear collection. He's also pitched for Budweiser, Gillette Co. and McDonald's Corp.

"What someone would consider a good living being a boxing promoter, for someone like Oscar would be chump change," said Arum, who estimates that without a big-name fighter such as De La Hoya himself, net earnings for a promoter can be less than a few million dollars annually.

Arum also has questioned De La Hoya's business sophistication and education (the boxer did not attend college), and his ability to run the business without Schaefer. He said he believes that the boxer's big paydays are subsidizing the business, something that can't go on forever.

Schaefer said the veteran promoter is likely feeling threatened by Golden Boy, which he said turned the corner this year and is making money--although he would not disclose how much.

"Golden Boy Promotions has risen rapidly in the ranks of promoters, and no one suddenly likes a competitor to come out of nowhere," said Schaefer, noting Arum's age. "It's time for the next generation of promoters."

Tough game

"Dismal," is how Nigel Collins, the editor-in-chief of Ring Magazine, describes the record of other boxers who have tried to become promoters. Included in that category, he said, was Sugar Ray Leonard and his effort to build a promotion company that recently ended in litigation between himself and his partner.

However, Collins said that Golden Boy might be a success, backed as it is with De La Hoya's name, ring earnings and the staff he has put together.

"He has an immediate advantage. He can talk to people that perhaps Arum couldn't without a translator," Collins said. "On the surface it looks good, but I guess their accountants and the IRS really know."

De La Hoya maintains he is dead serious about his promotion business, and said he expects to devote more time to it when he retires.

"The plans that Bob (Arum) had when he stinted his company, I don't think they were as big as ours," De La Hoya said. "We want to change the sport of boxing. We want to bring some integrity and honesty to the sport."

He would like to see the alphabet-soup of sanctioning bodies done away with and one national league formed that would oversee the sport.

Arum, whose offices were raided by federal agents looking into possible wrongdoing (he has not been personally implicated), was unimpressed by De La Hoya's idealism. "Everybody wants to clean up the sport. They all say that. Then they realize the sport is the sport," Arum said.

Schaefer, meanwhile, seems more focused on the business. Golden Boy recently spent $15 million purchasing an 11-story office building on Wilshire Boulevard just a stone's throw from the company's US Bank Tower offices, and it has a minority stake in a 250,000-square-foot building on New York's Madison Avenue. Both purchases were made through contacts Schaefer had.

"The contacts he has are just amazing. The friends we have made over the past years are well-connected people," said the boxer.

Far more experienced as a wealth manager than a promoter, Schaefer says many of the other investments under the Golden Boy name are more a matter of "asset allocation strategy" than core businesses, though the preference is for vehicles that are "synergistic" with De La Hoya's image.

That includes Impremedia LLC, the syndicate that controls La Opinion and New York's El Diario/La Prensa. Less synergistic is a minority share in a private company that owns the Equal sugar substitute.

Schaefer said Golden Boy is also considering a chain of storage businesses in the inner city, which would trade on De La Hoya's name and provide lower-income residents with clean, well-lit alternatives to what they have now. Public Storage Inc., the large Glendale-based company, controls only 11 percent of the market, he noted.

Will he, won't he?

The biggest question is De La Hoya's possible retirement. He has said he only plans to fight one more time after the Hopkins bout, but when he is questioned it's hard to pin him down on his plans. "They are right around the corner. It's a matter of seeing what happens alter this fight," he said.

His personal life may become a factor: After years of living the life of a playboy, he settled down three years ago and married Puerto Rican pop star Millie Corretjer, who is said to strongly dislike watching him fight.

Then there is the matter of whether he can keep up. In his last fight against Felix Sturm on June 5--a mandatory bout prior to Hopkins--he had what some believe was the worst performance of his career as he moved up to the middleweight category, although he won by decision.

Schaefer said he would like to see De La Hoya fight once or twice more, in bouts that are more celebrations of his career than the kind of rough and tumble brawl everyone expects with Hopkins. "Boxing is a very, very dangerous sport," he said.

De La Hoya's trainer, Floyd Mayweather Sr., the former boxer, is one who does not believe retirement is imminent. "It's something that gets in your blood," said the trainer. "It's something about the limelight."