The truth is elusive for Oscar De La Hoya as HBO film 'The Golden Boy' so clearly shows

The only time we know for sure that the truth is being told in the HBO-produced documentary, “The Golden Boy,” about the life of Oscar De La Hoya comes with less than two minutes left in the film, when in a scene shot in black and white, De La Hoya is musing about his life.

De La Hoya looks directly into the camera and says, “The Golden Boy, it’s all f***ing bulls**t. That’s all it is.”

That is the one, and perhaps only, time in this troubling two-part series that is now streaming on Max that we can be assured that De La Hoya, a boxing Hall of Famer, a prominent promoter, a world champion in six weight classes and an icon to many, is actually speaking the truth.

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The film makes it clear that much of De La Hoya’s life has been a web of lies, told at first to make him bigger and more prominent than he was, then often to get himself out of trouble and finally to attempt to explain the barely existent relationship with his six children and others close to him.

For years, he’s humbly gone to the media and apologized for one shortcoming or another, and usually, the media has fallen in line.

Poor Oscar, the narrative would go. He has this difficult relationship with his father; he lost his mother; he’s an alcoholic fighting to overcome the deadly disease.

It was all being told, though, by De La Hoya, and it’s obvious no one knew what was true and what was a figment of this outstanding boxer’s imagination.

In a 2011 interview with the legendary Bill Dwyre, the highly regarded former sports editor of the Los Angeles Times, De La Hoya delivered a classic De La Hoya apology.

“I could manipulate you, man,” he said. “I was good at it.”

And he still is. He’s still manipulating.

The documentary isn’t really a documentary, but more a dramatization of a life lived very much in the public, manipulated by a man hellbent on protecting the money-making machine that was "The Golden Boy.”

Longtime boxing publicist John Beyrooty had a habit of nicknaming fighters on the bout sheets he provided to media for matches. At De La Hoya’s pro debut at The Forum in Inglewood, California, against Lamar Williams on Nov. 23, 1992, only three months after defeating Germany’s Marco Rudolph to win an Olympic gold medal in Barcelona, Beyrooty dubbed De La Hoya “The Golden Boy” on the bout sheet that night.

Though Art Aragon had been nicknamed "The Golden Boy” in the 1950s by sportswriters, by the time De La Hoya turned pro in 1992, no one remembered Aragon and De La Hoya became "The Golden Boy."

The nickname became a huge part of who De La Hoya was and is and of the sales pitch used to make him a star. Unknowingly, it was built on a lie.

De La Hoya told the story before the Games that he was determined to win the gold for his late mother, Cecilia. The way the story went, Cecilia De La Hoya asked Oscar while on her deathbed to win the gold medal for her. She died on Oct. 28, 1990, and De La Hoya, for nearly 33 years, stuck with the story that he won the gold for mom.

It was particularly heartwarming, considering the fact that De La Hoya throughout his boxing career had painted his father, Joel De La Hoya Sr., as a stern taskmaster who never told his son he loved him.

But in the documentary, De La Hoya says the story about his mother is a lie. She didn’t tell him to win for her while on her deathbed. She was the stern one and, shockingly, he said she would beat him.

Maybe that’s the real story, and if it is, it makes one wonder why, after all this time, De La Hoya would choose to disparage the memory of his mother in that manner. After all, the medal story is accepted as fact because he's said it over and over.

Lies, though, tend to catch up with a person. In the film, De La Hoya said his father, only a few months earlier, had told him he loved him.

The problem is, he’s said that same thing to many people over the years. The viewer is left to determine when Joel De La Hoya Sr. finally told Oscar he loved him, or if that story is just another of Oscar’s manipulations to enhance his image.

So did Oscar win the gold for his mom, as she allegedly asked from her deathbed? Or was she abusive and unrelenting, as he said in the film? Did Joel De La Hoya Sr. only recently tell his son he loved him as Oscar now alleges, or did he do that 10, 15, 20 or more years ago, as others say he has told them.

According to the film, he doesn’t have much of a relationship with his six children: Jacob, 25; Devon, 24; Atiana, 24; Oscar Jr., 17; Lauren, 15; and Victoria, 9 — and that’s incredibly sad. He’s portrayed as a man who spent too much time chasing women and trying to be a celebrity to care much for his children.

He was accused by numerous women of sexual assault, which he has consistently denied.

In the film he finally was forced to admit after lying about it for years that photos of himself wearing a wig and fishnet stockings were real and weren’t photoshopped as he’d previously alleged had been done by Milana Dravnel, a Russian exotic dancer with whom he was having an affair.

De La Hoya has feuded on and off throughout much of his professional career with Bob Arum, his original promoter. De La Hoya often mocked Arum for the saying, “Yesterday I was lying; today, I’m telling the truth.” That line has stuck with Arum for 40 years even though it was said during a sports argument with friends.

Given the lies that De La Hoya has admitted to and those that now seem obvious, his motto might well have been, “I was lying yesterday, I’m lying today, and I’ll lie again tomorrow.”

His longtime friend, Eric Gomez, is the president of his Golden Boy Promotions. At the end of the film, Gomez is talking about his wish for all the controversies to finally end. He knows, though, that’s unlikely because he, as well as anyone, knows Oscar.

“Deep down, I know it’s probably never going to be smooth sailing,” Gomez said in the film. “You’re always trying to get to that smooth sailing, and it’s probably never going to happen. I think the reason why he’s doing this film in many ways is because he’s trying to transform. He’s trying to cleanse himself. He’s got so many things stored inside. Secrets. Things that he wants to get out. It’s liberating.”

Seconds later, he grins ruefully and continues.

“There’s nothing more powerful — nothing more powerful — than telling the truth,” Gomez said.

For De La Hoya, that’s another lesson still to be learned.