He may have been out of the ring for twenty months, but Oscar De La Hoya needed only six rounds to dispose of Ricardo Mayorga and take his WBC 154-pound title from him last night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

The "Golden Boy", looking sharp and throwing fire in the form of six and seven punch combinations, dropped Mayorga in the 1st round with - what else? - the left hook, bringing the crowd to delerium and serving notice to Mayorga that he was in a real fight. De La Hoya had Mayorga in trouble again later in the round, but the sly Nicaraguan managed to grab hold of his opponent and avoid going down a second time. As the bell sounded, De La hoya stood at the centre of the ring and glared at Mayorga.

At times the fight resembled Mayorga's fight with Felix Trinidad, in which a tentative "Tito" threw hellfire and bludgeoned Mayorga to an 8th round stoppage. Last night's fight carried the same drama, with De La Hoya ducking under Mayorga's wild, looping right hands, and Mayorga landing a hellacious right uppercut in the third round, but De La Hoya wasted no time trying to figure his opponent out and looked as if he would score a 1st round TKO. In the 2nd round, De La Hoya strafed Mayorga with straight right hands, though he appeared to get rocked for a brief moment by one of Mayorga's wild punches. De La hoya continued to stalk his opponent with a vicious body attack, and it didn't look like Mayorga would last too much longer.

In the 4th and 5th rounds, De La Hoya used his jab more, but boxed flat-footed, blocking Mayorga's looping shots and avoiding any rabbit punches. Referee Jay Nady warned Mayorga for hitting behind the head, and the round ends with De La Hoya leading on the scorecards. In the 6th and final round, De La Hoya overwhelms Mayorga with a multi-punch combination and floors him again. Mayorga's body language is not good, and upon rising, the "Golden Boy", a lethal finisher when he has a fighter hurt, flurried to Mayorga's head, recreating the Fernando Vargas knockout scene and causing Nady to stop the fight. An ecstatic De La Hoya rolled onto the canvas as the crowd erupted, acknowledging the Mexican-American's picture perfect victory. Ricardo Mayorga proved the perfect foil after all. De La Hoya improves his record to 38-4 (30), while Mayorga drops to 27-6-1 (22).

Skeptics may say that because Trinidad came out of retirement to stop Mayorga at 160 pounds, it was a no-brainer that De La Hoya would stop him in less at 154. In this light, the victory, though significant, does not do anything for De La Hoya's standing as an all-time great. But De La Hoya needed to erase the memory of his knockout loss to Bernard Hopkins, and he did that. The multi-millionaire could go off into the sunset with this, the perfect Hollywood ending, but there is reason to believe he'll be back in September. That one shot at glory, the chance of deposing the pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather Jr., is too tempting to pass up.

Whether a 33-year-old Oscar De La Hoya could beat the best fighter in the world in the undefeated Mayweather is another story, but one thing is certain - De La Hoya never backs down from a good challenge.

On the main undercard, Kassim Ouma overcame a first round knockdown by hard-hitting Juan Carlos Rubio to dominate on the inside an use his quicker combinations to win a split decision victory. I scored it 117-110 for Ouma, who improves to 24-2-1. Rubio falls to 32-3-1, but at least he fared better than the last time he was on a De La Hoya undercard, in which he was starched in 30 seconds by Kofi Jantuah.