If HBO isn’t in bed with Oscar De La Hoya, then on this particular May evening, they’re at least doing some pretty heavy petting. The premium cable channel, long the reigning champion of boxing telecasts, has reportedly shelled out some $10 million in marketing, production, and licensing fees to showcase the so-called Golden Boy as he faces journeyman Stevie “Two Pound” Forbes, an 18-to-1 underdog, before 27,000 fans in Carson, California. De La Hoya will be paid more than $10 million for his time between the ropes, but he’s promoting the event through his company, Golden Boy Promotions, so he’ll also get a juicy cut of ticket sales.

Since turning his attention to the business of boxing, De La Hoya has become a major player in a sport long dominated by two impresarios, Bob Arum and Don King, both of whom are 77. He’s trying to overhaul the sport at a time when the heavyweight division, typically the most popular, is in steep decline—the three current titleholders, each crowned by separate sanctioning bodies, might as well be invisible—and when boxing as a whole is getting clobbered by the rising popularity of Ultimate Fighting. Golden Boy had a stake in 95 percent of boxing’s total pay-per-view volume in the United States last year, up from 65 percent in 2006. With De La Hoya’s stable of 50 fighters—many of them aging but still capable headliners—he has become the preeminent provider of fights, especially for Hispanic audiences (one of the sport’s few growth markets). His outfit delivered 50 shows in 2007, including many programs for the HBO Ole channel and the Solo Boxeo series for Spanish-language network TeleFutura, as well as features for regular HBO.

De La Hoya says he’s proud of Golden Boy not so much for its profit potential—prizefighting is a notoriously low-margin business—as for its potential to reform boxing from the inside. “Traditionally, fighters have had no idea how much money promoters make off them,” he says. “But we’re up-front with guys. Our books are open. We break down every source of revenue so they can see every cent.” Eventually he hopes, somewhat ambitiously, to offer pensions, health insurance, and financial planning to his fighters. He also hopes to attract enough corporate sponsors to put boxing back on network TV, which deserted the sport in the early 1980s. “We treat boxing like a legitimate business, bringing in integrity, honesty, and transparency,” he says. “We treat fighters like normal human beings. We’re a company for the fans, for the people.”

Competing promoters tend to snicker at such lofty pronouncements, and they claim that De La Hoya’s status as boxing’s last remaining matinee idol means Golden Boy gets preferential treatment from HBO—a claim he doesn’t exactly refute. “Oscar appointed himself the moral guardian of boxing and then lumped the rest of us promoters together in a different boat, like we’re all crooks,” gripes Dan Goossen of Goossen Tutor, a fight promoter in California. “He’s talked a lot about introducing ethical and honorable business methods, but during his seven years as a promoter he hasn’t changed a thing. I don’t see Golden Boy saving boxing: I see it succeeding by any means it can.”

If anything, the fight in May shows what De La Hoya is up against in trying to attract fans to a sport many perceive as shady and, worse, boring. From the opening bell, De La Hoya seems like a battered memory of the electrifying fighter who won an Olympic gold medal and world championships in six weight classes. He looks logy and tentative and all of his 35 years. Still, the HBO commentators sprinkle on superlatives like waiters with pepper mills: De La Hoya is “throwing sensational combinations” and “fighting the perfect fight” and, most implausibly, “looking like he used to look 10 years ago.”     

The Golden Boy gets a unanimous win that is never in doubt (one judge has him winning all 12 rounds), but the dullness of the bout is reflected in dismal viewership. In the history of HBO, no fight so heavily hyped by the network has ever earned lower ratings. HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg insists the $10 million investment was worth the risk, even if the show was merely a loss leader for other programming. HBO, he says, was bowing to the demands of the marketplace, which is increasingly controlled by De La Hoya. Indeed, HBO has signed a four-year deal with him guaranteeing that it will buy a specific number of fights for a specific number of dates. No other promoter has such an arrangement.

De La Hoya had talked of retiring from fighting this month to focus on business full time, but he recently started waffling. His final bout was initially planned as a rematch of his loss in 2007 on pay-per-view to the preposterously gifted and outrageously self-centered Floyd “Pretty Boy” Mayweather. A five-month marketing campaign and an HBO reality series helped make that fight the most lucrative event in the history of pay TV. Not only did De La Hoya personally pocket a minimum of $25 million (and Mayweather, $10 million) for a night’s work, but Golden Boy Promotions enjoyed a hefty share of ticket sales ($18.4 million) and pay-per-view sales ($147 million). De La Hoya’s total take was in excess of $50 million.