Oscar De La Hoya Recounts Being Physically Abused by His Mom in New Documentary: 'I Was Just Numb'

When famed boxer Oscar De La Hoya won the Olympic gold medal in 1992 in Barcelona, it seemed like the ultimate and most poignant storybook ending: two years earlier, his mother, Cecilia Gonzales De La Hoya, died after being diagnosed breast cancer and never got the chance to see her son compete in the Olympics. With the victory, De La Hoya fulfilled his mother’s dying wish. 

And throughout the rest of his life and hugely successful boxing career, she remained a driving force. Oscar once said that when he stepped into the ring to face his opponent at the beginning of a match, he would try not to look into that opponent’s eyes but rather stare into the sky “as if I can feel [my mother] and she’s looking at me, and my mother’s taking care of me.”

Yet, as much as Oscar loved his mother, the relationship between the two of them was a complicated one that involved her inflicting physical abuse on Oscar when he was a child, he says. It’s one of several themes recounted in the new Fernando Villena-directed documentary, The Golden Boy: Oscar De La Hoya, whose first part aired on HBO Monday night; part two will air Tuesday.

According to the documentary, Cecilia crossed the border when she was 14 years old by herself in order to pursue a singing career but ended up working at a zipper factory. She gave up aspirations of singing professionally when she married former boxer Joel De La Hoya, with whom she had three children, including Oscar. In the documentary, Joel recalls a conversation the couple had when she performed live in public one time: “If you want to be a singer, as much as it hurts, I’ll let you go. But if you give it up, we’ll get married.”

In the early part of the film, Oscar remembers returning home to the family’s apartment in East Los Angeles as a child after an early morning run as part of his boxing routine. “I would hear this angelic voice,” he says. “It was my mother’s singing. She would be cooking for me and singing Spanish songs. She used to sing with a lot of passion…Listening to my mother singing, I always felt safe.”

But there was also a dark side to the relationship. Oscar recalls one day as a kid playing stickball on his East Los Angeles street when the ball went into the street and he was nearly hit by a speeding car that left him lying on the ground. “I could see my mom running down the street and waiting for my mother to give me a hug,” he says. “The first thing she does is hit me, beats the crap out of me.”

Oscar says that his mother would hit him when he cried, saying “I’m going to give you something to cry about!” He adds he never saw Cecilia physically abuse his siblings but rather always him.

“She was hitting me so much, she started crying…and she was angry because I wasn’t reacting to it. I was just numb at that point. I hated it when she hit me.”

Oscar also reveals in the film that boxing was an outlet to release his aggression — he admits that when he saw his opponent in the ring, he would picture his mother’s face on them and start to fight.

“I loved getting hit in the face because I loved the build-up of the retaliation…When that first bell rings, it’s game on. And when I get hit, it doesn’t hurt. Now I have an excuse to get angry.” 

And yet Cecilia still loomed large as a beloved figure in his life at the peak of his career — in his rematch victory over Julio César Chavez in 1998, he dedicated the win to his mother. “This is for you,” he said, smiling in front of the cameras. 

Oscar remembers the moment that his mother cried after her Stage 4 cancer diagnosis when he was 16, news that left him without any emotion other than shock. The final fight that she witnessed her son in the ring was at the Goodwill Games in 1990; by that point, her health was failing.

“I see this lady waving the American and Mexican flag. She missed her chemotherapy to attend that last fight.”

The boxer recalls crying when he returned home from the hospital after visiting Cecilia, who no longer could recognize her son’s face. “Coming back to the hospital,” he says later, “I wanted to rip the elevator open and run straight to her and maybe there’s a chance she could see me. But she was gone. I never had to courage to tell her I love her. I wish I did.”

Today, Cecilia Gonzalez De La Hoya’s name graces a cancer center at Adventist White Memorial in Los Angeles. 

Part two of The Golden Boy: Oscar De La Hoya airs Tuesday July 25 on HBO.