HBO will be premiering the two-part documentary “The Golden Boy” covering the trials and tribulations of Oscar De La Hoya’s life and career on back-to-back nights starting July 24.
De La Hoya was one of boxing’s biggest stars and box office draws immediately after an Olympics gold medal win in 1992, and all the way until he retired in 2008.
De La Hoya became a ten-time world champion across six divisions and was honored with induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
He also battled his share of demons outside of the ring due to drug and alcohol abuse.
In 2007, infamous photos were leaked by Siberian exotic dancer Milana Dravnel showing a series of cross-dressing photos featuring De La Hoya.
De La Hoya made sure to address the scandal during the documentary and come clean about the ordeal.
“I talked about everything. I talked about those famous photos too. That’s actually the first thing I wanted out there when I decided to do this. I said, ‘I’m ready to talk about whatever you want me to talk about. My life is an open book,’” De La Hoya said in an interview with Ariel Helwani on “The MMA Hour.”
“The lingerie, the this and that. I’ll tell you what. We got that girl from New York that leaked those photos. I’m not going to get into it, but we found her somewhere in [Lake Atitlán, Guatemala] hiding out and she said the truth of exactly what happened … apparently there were like three girls there. I have no recollection. I was just loaded. I can’t remember. I was drugged up, drinking, this and that.
“Oh yeah [I got someone to say it was fake]. Of course. I have a whole machine behind me at the peak of my career, right. We’re like ‘holy sh!t – how are we going to make these things disappear?’ Let’s hire this forensic. I don’t know what he was. He’s going through everything. And we convince him with money to say that they were fake. And the world believed that they were Photoshopped, and we were home free. And guess what happens? I’m married at the time. My wife is angry at me. She’s fed up with me because I am left and right cheating on her, and this and that. She convinces me to go on national TV [in 2011] and tell the truth.”
In separate interviews leading up to the debut of the HBO documentary, De La Hoya has shared that he paid off people so that the pictures would not be leaked – as well as paying $20 million to Dravnel – but the photos were leaked anyway.
“[My team] told me this story about the Russian mob and this and that and [how] we gotta pay millions of dollars,” De La Hoya told ET earlier this week. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, well, just make it go away. It’s gonna ruin my image. It’s gonna ruin who the Golden Boy is and people are gonna hate me. Just make it go away.’
“That’s the story that they told me, is that my lawyer at the time had to jump into a rooftop pool in New York with one of the Russian mobsters to make sure that they didn’t have wires connected to their body. And sure enough, apparently, they paid all this money, but yet the photos still leaked. So, I never really investigated all that. I never knew exactly what really happened. The documentary sheds a little bit of light on it, but it’s all confusing to me.”
Dravnel ended up suing De La Hoya for $100 million claiming she was defamed and subject to emotional distress after selling the photos and pressured to recant the legitimacy of them.
The suit was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.