In an era where boxing legends are becoming a rarity, the days of Ali, Frazier, Foreman, Duran and Chavez being a distant if not spectacular memory, Oscar de la Hoya is on the verge of trying to secure his name amongst those elite fighters.

De la Hoya, like Sugar Ray Leonard before him, is the marketable American Dream, Olympic gold-medalist, and shrewd business man. Not quite the great white hope, he is a Mexican-American with admittedly little in common with his Mexican fans. Mainstream America can't get enough of Oscar's pretty-boy image, whether he's in the studio cutting a Grammy-nominated album, on the golf course at some charity event, or in the ring knocking out opponents with his patent left hook.

The story of Oscar de la Hoya is a made-for-tv movie in the making, with the final chapter yet to be written. There's the Olympic gold-medal win in Barcelona, where he dropped to his knee and pointed to the sky in tribute to his mother who had died from cancer. There's his destruction of his idol and fellow Mexican Julio Ceasar Chavez. There's his on-again-off-again relationship with promoter Bob Arum (about whom Oscar once remarked, "I beat the biggest Jew to ever come out of Harvard"). There's his controversial loss to Felix "Tito" Trinidad and his subsequent comeback at one-hundred fifty-four pounds to knock out arch-rival "el Feroz", Fernando Vargas.

Oscar de la hoya is somewhere in between a bad actor and a good politician. He is the man, the ego, and soon to be, the legendary icon.

And he's not stupid, either. He wants only three or four more fights before he ends his glorious career. He is well known for threatening to retire after many of his fights. Perhaps he is no longer thrilled about training. At any rate, The Golden Boy is gearing up to write his name in the record books, and in order to do so he must lay out a flawlessly executed blueprint for the perfect fairytale ending.

That means beating the fighters that beat him. He was unable to convince Trinidad come out of retirement for a rematch, but on september 13th he will fight a rematch with "Sugar" Shane Mosely, the only fighter to beat de la Hoya convincingly. Perhaps a rematch with Vargas is on the horizon as well. Smartly, Oscar pulled out of negotiations with Bernard Hopkins, who many feel could do to Oscar what he did to Trinidad. Or maybe he's waiting until the thirty-eight-year-old "Executioner" gets a little older before he fights him.

The point is that every precaution is being taken to ensure that Oscar de la Hoya cements his legacy. Once Oscar is gone, there will be a huge void in the boxing world that will prove difficult to fill. Some say Oscar is a pretty-boy who's afraid of getting his hair messed up, but no one can dispute the fact that Oscar de la hoya has never ducked anyone, ANYONE, in his career, and he will soon be remembered as one of the greatest lightweights of all-time. You can disagree if you like.

But you would still be wrong, of course.