The image played over and over again in his head: Oscar De La Hoya, the "Golden Boy", Olympic gold medallist, a hall-of-fame lock, writhing in pain on the canvas after a left hook to the liver by the then middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins. It was an image he needed badly to erase from his mind. How could he go out like that?

And so Oscar De La Hoya seeks to close out his American dream of a career by defeating Ricardo Mayorga for his meaningless WBC junior middleweight title Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Neither Mayorga or De La Hoya are rated in Ring magazine's pound-for-pound listings; De La Hoya due to inactivity, Mayorga due to the dubious decision by the corrupt WBC to grant him an undeserved title shot against Michele Piccirillo last year, after he was beaten soundly by Felix Trinidad and subsequently retired. It's dissapointing that after threatening for so many months to trim down to 147 pounds, a weight at which he had considerable success, De La Hoya-Mayorga is a junior middleweight fight.

At 154 lbs De La Hoya is 3-1, though he fought well in all bouts: a cautious but clear victory over Javier Castillejo, a destruction of Fernando Vargas which many consider his defining victory, a systematic breakdown of aging Yory Boy Campas, and a controversial decision loss to Shane Mosley in their rematch. Mayorga is a bigger threat at welterweight, where he nearly decapitated Vernon Forrest to legitimately win the pound-for-pound title, but since then he is best remembered for the thrilling but demoralizing beating he took against an out-of-retirement Trinidad. Saturday's fight would be more dramatic were it at a weight where both fighters are more effective, but the unpredictable Mayorga still has a puncher's chance to make things interesting.

De La Hoya, 37-4 (29), will no doubt be sharp, the twenty months he's spent away from the ring notwithstanding. Remember, "Tito" Trinidad was away for longer, and though he looked tentative in the early rounds, he was sharp the rest of the way. De La Hoya will establish his jab early and go to Mayorga's body, weaving under his wild, looping punches and avoiding his roughhouse tactics. De La Hoya is faster than Trinidad, though at 154 he does not hit nearly as hard. Mayorga, 27-5-1 (22), is obviously fighting for the big payday; whether he actually believes he can defeat De La Hoya only he knows. In typical Mayorga fashion, the loquacious Nicaraguan has done everything from threatening to detach De La Hoya's retina to threating to pull out of the fight if he isn't paid more. De La Hoya brushes the behaviour off as tactics to get inside his head, tactics, he says, which won't work. The "Golden Boy" has said that if he gets knocked down five times, he's getting up and winning the fight. Mayorga is not in De La Hoya's class, both boxing-wise and personality-wise, but he does pack enough power in his fists to make things entertaining.

I don't buy the "Danger Zone" slogan that HBO is using to sell this fight, which includes the ridiculous image of an angry Mayorga picking up cinderblocks and crashing them to the floor. Mayorga is a hand-picked opponent who will trash-talk enough to sell the fight for Golden Boy Promotions, De La Hoya's promotional company, and present a pedestrian-type threat before being dismantled by the smarter De La Hoya. However, Mayorga-Trinidad was a hell of a fight, so maybe De La Hoya, in the twilight of his career, has slipped just enough to make this one a toss up.

But I doubt it.

Prediction: De La Hoya KO 12