Golf is More “Thrilling” than Boxing | Engel Angle

It's Thanksgiving week, so eat the food you like, which doesn't include turkey. Mac, Engle, Fort Worth Star Telegram, Engle, Angle Podcast, here on the Sunset Lounge. Thanks for joining me.

Wonderful guests today, and every other day you get an opportunity to listen to this. This guy grew up in Los Angeles with, I would say, not a lot, but he worked his way up one of the hardest paths in sports, boxing. Now before you say, I'm not a boxing fan, I don't like boxing, whatever, whatever, fine.

Just hear me out on this one. I became boxing, I wouldn't say junky, but fan when I started to do boxing workouts several years ago. It is the best workout, it's a hell of a lot of fun, it's a great way to get stuff figured out, figure stuff out, it's very challenging, it's terrific.

I'm a big, big proponent of boxing workouts, and a couple of times I actually got in the ring and did like sparring. I don't think I'll be doing that anymore, but it's a great workout and it gives you a different appreciation, a deeper appreciation for the people who actually do it, because it is incredibly hard. The more I learned about the sport and the people who actually go into it and are able to make a career out of it, the greater appreciation I had for it, because it is just a labyrinth of broken glass.

For those who actually do make a career out of it, hats off to them, because I learned this one time when I had a conversation with a man named Thomas Halzer, Thomas Halzer was the biographer of Muhammad Ali, and when I met him before the Manny Pacquiao Floyd Mayweather fight in 2014 in Las Vegas, I asked him what the appeal was of boxing him, and he said, because some of the very best people I've met in my life are through boxing, and he said, some of the very worst people I've met in my life are through boxing. Professional sports can really flesh out the best and worst of people for a variety of reasons. It's one of the reasons why we're so drawn to it, that as well as the simplicity of a conclusion, the definitive win loss, that's very appealing, it's very easy, it's very basic, so that draws you to it and conflict, obviously the root of it, one team versus another, one guy versus another, all of that, that's all very, very easy, basic, simple pleasures that can find a consumer, and then of course if we do some of it ourselves, we can kind of relate to it, so most people don't box, and I've only done it a few times when I sparred and I'm like, holy crap, this is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, in fact, I like sharing this anecdote, I used to go to this gym, I don't anymore, but I used to go to this gym that was owned and run by a former Bantamweight champion, a guy named Polly Iala, Polly is a terrific guy, he was a great fighter, like I said, he was a prize, he was a title belt holder as a Bantamweight, so he used to, and I think he still does, run the workouts himself, Polly is one of those guys in boxing who's made a career out of it, and he's lived to tell the tale, and he's built a very nice life for himself of his wife and their kids, so he gets in the ring, and he puts on a chest protector, and Polly is not a tall man, and he's a few years older than me, and he's maybe five six or something like that, but he puts on a big, thick heavy chest protector, and then he puts on two mits over his hands, and he says, okay, Mack, you've got a minute, hit me, that was the most challenging, difficult minute of my entire life, he starts crowding my hands, and he starts, I don't even think he was trying, now by the point that I had done this, I had been working out for about 30 minutes, so I already a little bit fatigued, but I don't care, that could have been the first thing that I had done, I had one minute to hit this guy in the chest, one minute, I think I might have scraped his chest once, he starts leaning on you, he starts cheating you, and he starts doing what is demanded of the sport when you're in that ring, and you're trying to win, I couldn't touch him, it was, and I love the experience, I'd love to try it again because it was just so hard, and I was exhausted by the end of that one minute, one minute, wipe me out, I can't even imagine what three minutes and ten rounds would do, or 12 rounds, or back in the old days when they used to go 15 rounds, so one guy, and my guest for this episode, who has a lot of experience in this, is a man who made it all the way to the very top, his name is Oscar De La Jolla, and Oscar for a long time was the face of boxing, both as an amateur, when he was a gold medalist for Team USA, and then when he became a professional and a top prize fighter for a long, long time, and now he's going on to the professional side where he's a promoter, and you can see his name is at fights all over the place, it's called Golden Boy Productions, and in fact recently he was promoting a fight, or one of his top fighters is a man named Virgil Ortiz, who's from Grand Prairie, Texas, which is between Dallas and Fort Worth, and he's made of, Oscar's made a very successful career for himself in the very challenging, cutthroat world of professional fight promotions.

So there's one part to this that I think anybody, anybody, should hear, because it applies to your life in some way, shape, or form, and it's a really fascinating answer, and it's not one that I expected at all, both about wanting to box and finding the thrill of competing from sports when your body no longer really wants you to do it. So without further ado, please welcome Oscar De La Jolla. I really appreciate this, I've talked to you once before, it's been several years, and you've been great to deal with over the years that I really appreciate it, so thanks so much.

You've had it brother, thank you. I need a trivia question answered for us, because I was going through your bio, my friend and I, who are fight fans, who's a Fort Worth guy, were debating this, did you ever fight at any point in your career in Fort Worth, Oscar? Never did.

You never did. Okay, I've answered that. We were debating that.

Okay, so something that I know you've heard about for forever, since you became a professional fighter, or even maybe before then, Oscar, which is boxing's dead, it's dead, it's all this negative stuff, and here we are 30, 40 years later, and longer than that, boxing is still going on. As you've been on virtually every part of the sport, give me your overall assessment of the health of it. I believe, I believe boxing, people have always been talking about boxing being dead for since I can remember.

I remember my father telling me, when I was a little kid, telling me, oh, boxing needs help and people are saying it's dead and this and that, but yet every weekend we would watch close circuit TV and the big major fights, and literally the world would shut down. Boxing is a sport that obviously is not organized, it's not a league, and you don't have continuity, you don't have boxing on a regular basis, you don't, boxing is not planned ahead of time where you can make your plans and invite your friends over to a pay-per-view, and everybody has a good old time. Boxing is just, it's fragmented, it's scattered here and there, you have an event here, one month, and you'll have another one in a week and another three weeks, so it's not on a regular basis on TV where people can watch.

So when there's no fights, when there's nothing on TV, people will automatically scratch their heads and tell themselves or convince themselves, oh my gosh, boxing is dying, I mean, it's not the case, boxing, if you take a look at the calendar of fights coming up and you take a look at the fighters that we have now on a global basis, boxing has actually grown, boxing has actually gotten bigger and better, the purses are much higher for fighters, we're doing record gates, which are in the bird up for boxing events, and it's exciting because starting next year, I mean, boxing will probably be out on a regular basis, on a weekly basis, which is exciting for everyone, so yeah, is boxing dead now? Well, people always say boxing is dead, yes, but I think boxing is healthier than ever. You know, someone who has been in the fight game for as long as you have can speak to something about the sport, I asked George Foreman this who fought well into his 40s, God rest his soul, we saw Roy Jones junior fight for a long time, we've seen obviously Manny, what is it about this sport?

Forget the money, Oscar, what is it about this sport that causes guys to keep coming back into the ring long after the doctor would say, yeah, you should probably give them, what is it about it? Well, if you put money aside, obviously money is the root of all peoples, and you put all that aside, I would say it's dignity, it is respect, it is having a voice, being noticed, you know, because if you take a look at the landscape in boxing, and I'm talking about when boxing first, boxing is a very humble sport, boxing is a sport where you have these kids just like myself coming out of East Delhi with nothing, with having no voice, with having no presence, with having nobody to, you know, that listens to us, but inside the ring, the world stops, the world will watch, the world will listen to you, you are the key, you are the man inside that ring, and it's like a drug, it literally is like a drug, it gets you, it grabs you, and it doesn't let go, and it's not, it's not the line light, it's not, it's not being famous, it's not, you know, I'm gonna be more popular than this guy, and if I keep fighting, more people are gonna recognize me, no, it's not that, it comes from within, the respect that you have for yourself, the respect that you think people have for you, you know, when you're in the ring, you're King Kong, you are the man, you are the person that everybody's gonna pay attention to, and that right there is probably the best feeling ever for a fighter, and we could never let that go, it's just impossible, it's hard, you know, when I see, when I see boxing on TV right now today, I always ask myself, or tell myself, oh, I can, I can kick his ass, I can, I can't beat him, I can, you know, and I miss it, and I miss being there, and obviously I convinced myself, and tell myself, well, I'm older, I can't do it, but I feel that adrenaline, you know, I feel that adrenaline of like, oh my gosh, what if I was in the ring, what if I was in the ring, and people will respect me more, they will pay more attention to me, so it's, yeah, it's just a satisfaction of belonging, you know, belonging to society, because when we were poor growing up, in those streets of in East LA, or in Detroit, or wherever, and all you feel from Atlanta, we weren't noticed, and inside the ring, we are noticed. It's break time here in the sunset lounge, time to remind you that all of the shows are free.

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Now, back to Oscar. So since you've retired, and I've asked other guys who have gone on into the business of sports, who are former professional and very successful athletes in their own right, whether it's team sports or individual sports, and then they've gotten into kind of like what you're doing, the professional part of it, the business part of it. Oscar, have you found anything since you left the ring that comes close to duplicating that feeling that you're talking about, that high of feeling like you matter the way you did when you were a fighter.

Thank God I did. I actually found golf. Really?

Golf did it. Golf did it. And it is, it is a strange answer and yeah, I was strange for it to take up, but I'm telling you, if I didn't have golf in my life, the adrenaline, you know, when you think of birdie, and your partners are just in awe, they think you're the king, they think you're the Messiah, you know, and you shoot a, you know, you come back to reality and shoot an 85.

What's your handicap? Like what's your handicap? I actually have a four handicap.

Oh, you're good. You're actually have a four handicap, so I'm really into it. I'm really, you know, it's it's a substitute, you know, for that for that ride, it's a substitute for that adrenaline, you know, for for the attention.

I mean, when you're out there and you hit a good drive, man, your partners are like, oh my gosh, can I bow down to you? You know, it's pretty cool. So yeah, for me, it was golf.

I mean, I'm sure, I'm sure that, you know, a lot of athletes will will will have the the same answer, but yeah, but just there's something about golf that does it for me. A Virgil Ortiz is a local kid from Grand Prairie. That's not too far from where I live.

It's only 20 minutes or east of me. What qualities, and he's an old man, he's not old, 27's not old by any stress, the imagination, but he's down the road a little bit as a professional fighter. What qualities do you see in him that you think makes you believe he's got a shot at attaining even more success than he's already had?

Because this fight on Saturday night's pretty tough. This fight, I think once again, is a very tough fight for Virgil. You know, that's who he is.

He likes fighting, fighting the very best. I believe that Virgil Ortiz hasn't even peaked. Physically, yeah, he might be, you know, as strong as he's going to get, but mentally, I think he's growing into himself.

He's figuring out all the various styles that are going to be presented to him, but he's comfortable in his own body now, which makes him confident. Makes him confident inside the ring. He's a strong kid.

He's in great shape. He can knock you out with either hand, just like his record indicates, but I think the fact that he's gaining more confidence is going to make him a more dangerous fighter, you know, a happy fighter inside the ring. And what I mean by that is when you're comfortable and when you're happy inside the ring, you're a dangerous man.

I mean, I feel sorry for anybody who gets in the ring with him, but at 27 years old, yeah, the best is yet to come. I'm going to put you in a little bit of an unfair spot here, so bear with me to educate me. One thing fight fans do is, and sports fans in general ask her, say, who is this guy?

And you're looking for a cop, right? You know, when you look at Virgil Ortiz, if you got to describe him to somebody who's not familiar with him, who is he? What sort of fighter, what characteristics from other fighters can we sort of imagine to have an idea of who this guy is?

He's a relentless machine. He is a throwback to Marvelous Marvin Haggler. There we go.

You know, he's one of those, if you were to put him in the era of figuring Leonard Thomas turns, Marvelous Marvin Haggler, Roberta Durand, Virgil Ortiz, he would fit right in. That's who Virgil Ortiz is. That's pretty heavy stuff.

Okay, so we, you know, we've had an era of great fighters come and go, and now some of the bigger names in the sport are getting older. It sounds to me like bud Crawford is ready to retire, although you and I both know just because a fighter guy at fighter retires on Tuesday doesn't mean he's not going to come back on Wednesday, can all Alvarez, as obviously on the the backside of his career. Who do you see in the sport that you could see potentially fill that void, that fighter that everybody kind of automatically knows, even if they aren't necessarily big fans of the sport, but they know that fighter.

Well, I mean, there's a fighter who has no world title, who hasn't won a world title in Ryan Garcia, who's crossed over, you know, unfortunately he's very inactive and is dealing with a few issues, but I have to say Virgil Ortiz. I have to say Virgil Ortiz. I mean, would you say that if he wasn't your guy, you think?

I have to say what? Because of the, because of the Pacific and he's in, he's like one fight away, one world title away from let's say filling up the Dallas Talos. You know, and by the way, it's something that he told Jerry Jones that he's going to do when he first came on the scene.

I remember promoting Panello Alvarez at the Dallas Talos stadium and here you have this young kid, goes up to the podium and tells Jerry, Jerry, I'm going to fill up this stadium one day for you. And I believe it. And I believe that, you know, after this fight, and it's not Virgil's bulk, but after this fight, because all the world champions are tied up in the moments, after this fight, Virgil's going to go after every single world champion.

And those world champions are just going to be lined up for him to become a superstar, one right after the other. So if Virgil keeps on winning, if Virgil continues to knock these guys out, he can become a superstar. I want to get your thoughts on, you know, I know obviously you have a relationship with the zone.

And one thing, fight fans always seem to want is more access to boxing, right? And we saw Netflix dip its toe into live sports. They did it with a couple of different fights.

And to me, as a consumer, I'm like, great, it's terrific. You're in the business of it. Is that good for the sport?

Oh, it's great for the sport. I believe that the more eyeballs we can get, the better. It doesn't matter what, what network or who's televising it, the more people we can, we can have watching boxing, the better for the sport.

You know, it's better for other networks like the zone, it's better for Paramount that's coming in with boxing and Q1. Up next year, it's better all around for the entire sport, for the fighters, most importantly, they have platforms to fight on. So, you know, boxing, boxing, like I said, is fragmented, but when when televised on global, you know, global platform, Netflix, the zone, and it's a great fight, the whole world stops.

So, I'm, I'm really, I'm really for anyone who wants to televised boxing, whether it's Paramount or Netflix, hey, welcome to boxing, you know, it's sort with, with my arms wide open, you know, and brain dust, you know, where do you put the, I guess, genre of the Jake Paul exhibition fights, which seems to be a thing now, there's an audience for it. I know I'm torn about it as a fight fan, but you're a promoter and you know, no one ever accused you when you were a fighter of doing anything. I don't think, but it's a thing now, and whether or not it's good or bad, but as someone who's in it, what do you think of that creation in its space and the boxing ecosystem, so to speak?

I think, I think we, I think it's important to educate, you know, the casual fan who's interested in boxing, I mean, to educate them and and and make sure they know that, you know, exhibitions like Jake Paul versus Silva, for instance, it's an exhibition, it's entertainment. That's all it is, it's not a real fight, it's not a real sanctioned fight, where, you know, where you have the, you know, the rules, you know, three rounds and, you know, certain size gloves, and you know, so I think I think education is going to be key here, to make sure that the casual fan knows and knows how to separate, separate the boxing that it's experienced, you know, the boxing that has been around forever, writing 12 rounds with six or eight ounce gloves, you know, yeah, it's I think it's all about education, making sure that they know, but I'm not, I'm not against it, I think I'm for it because again, eyeballs, if, if you're attracting the younger generation, young, I mean, young kids are now coming up to me and going to the gyms and, you know, kids that have no idea what boxing was, are now practicing the sport, are now buying boxing gloves and want them to be like, you know, virtualities or Jake Paul, or it's great for boxing, it's great for the sport a lot. So I need you to educate me, speaking of education, I know Dana White has done whatever you think about him, good or bad, he's obviously done a lot in mixed martial arts, and now there's some thought, well, not somebody he's getting into the world of boxing, and, you know, he potentially wants to challenge the long time decades old Muhammad Ali Act, which was put in in 61, I think, and I think you and some other people are concerned about it.

Well, can you explain to me what he wants to do, and can you explain how what he wants to do would affect the fight viewer, if it would? Well, look, I mean, I'll give an example, you know, the Muhammad Ali Act was put in place to literally protect the fighter, and I don't understand that the first, the first thing they want to do, TKO, the first thing they want to do is, is change the law, is change the Muhammad Ali Act, that's the first thing they want to do. I mean, that's a little suspicious to me.

I mean, I absolutely agree with that. Yeah, there you have, there you have promoters like myself, who were part of the Muhammad Ali Act, you know, to have put it together, fine and happy with it, because the fighter is protected. You know, we're not painting it, we don't want it to be changed, it's fine the way it is, because the fighter is protected.

And then you have this entity, who all of a sudden wants to change that amen the the Muhammad Ali Act, to me, it's obviously very suspicious, but what it does, they want to form their own rankings, they want to have their own belt, their own rules, their laws, they want to have, they want to change the ring from what I've heard, it's, and what it does, I mean, and let's not talk about the, the, the, the pay scale, the pay scale is going to be exactly like the UFC, what's going to happen to, what's going to happen to a young fighter, okay, who is gifted, who is a prodigy, let's say like myself, okay, I'm going to sign with TKO, and I'm going to maybe fight once a year, maybe, if that, maybe if I win, if I'm lucky enough to win, I'll fight twice a year in a four-rounder or a six-rounder, but I'll never be able to develop my skills, the viewer will never be able to see the potential of that fighter because they're going to get beat in their first fight, they're going to get knocked out in their second fight, so you're never going to see, be able to see the development of a world champion, just like you do in boxing today, we have four rounders, six rounders, eight rounders, we developed these young kids in order to mature into world champions, so the viewing audience can see the final product, the championship level, you will not see that in under the TKO mod because these fighters are never going to develop, they're going to get beat, they're going to retire, they're going to be shelved, just because of that pasted. So last question I'll ask you, and this has nothing to do with boxing, but you mentioned golf, and a someone who was a fighter who knocked out opponents, and now who's gotten the thrill of playing golf, what's a greater thrill? Knock out or, and I don't know if you had one, a hole in one or an eagle or a great shot.

I seriously have to say a hole in one, I've, I've gotten two, you're where? I've gotten two, it was early on in my career, in my career, in my golf career, yeah, I've gotten two, and they weren't by accident, but that feeling, that feeling of getting, I mean, I probably won't get a hole in one ever in my life again, you know, and so the fact that I can go inside the ring at any given day and knock somebody out, it's kind of like, okay, I've done that, I've been there, you know, but golf, you just, you never know, you just do not, I never know when I'm going to get that feeling ever again, and so I think, I think, I think the hole in one is by far the better feeling. There are all the things that you could have told me in this 20 or 25 minutes that, the fact that you're a golf nut now, I would not have put any money on that.

Well, congratulations on your golf career. Thank you. I wish you the very best with, with you continued endeavors with boxing and continued to grow the sport.

Thanks a lot for your time, you got it brother. Thank you. Thank you.

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