BOXING Champion Hopkins has hopes De La Hoya can win

If Oscar De La Hoya wins Saturday, the money-maker may not retire.
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PHILADELPHIA -- Undisputed middleweight champion Bernard "The Executioner" Hopkins will be rooting for WBC/WBA super welterweight champion Oscar De La Hoya to defeat Shane Mosley in Saturday night's pay-per-view mega-fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
De La Hoya (36-2, 29 KOs) is looking to avenge a 2000 split-decision loss to Mosley (38-2, 35 KOs), in which "Sugar" Shane lifted Oscar's WBC welterweight title. Hopkins and IBF junior middleweight champ Winky Wright are but two of many hoping to land a high-paying date with De La Hoya, who remains boxing's surest draw.
But a repeat defeat to Mosley could spell the end of the career of the "Golden Boy," who has fame, good looks, a beautiful wife and more money than anyone outside of Mike Tyson could possibly hope to spend.
Don't want him gone
You better believe none of the fighters still waiting for a shot at De La Hoya wants to see the goose that lays those large golden eggs retiring just yet.
"Oscar doesn't lay golden eggs, he lays diamond eggs," Hopkins said. "No question, Oscar is my biggest money fight. He'd be my grand finale. Everybody knows what a huge fight that would be.
"But I won't belittle myself by flying to Vegas and calling him out. Although I see Oscar beating Shane by a slight margin, I don't see him fighting me any time soon. He's not stupid. Oscar is too soft and too pretty to get in there with Bernard Hopkins.
"If he beats Shane, he'll probably go straight to Winky Wright to unify at 154 [pounds]. I hope that's not the case, but that's how I see it."
Could retire
Longtime HBO analyst Larry Merchant acknowledged that Oscar could retire if he fails to settle the score with Mosley.
"You never want to say never, it might be how Oscar loses rather than whether he loses," Merchant told Steve Kim, of Maxboxing.com.
"I don't know if he can come back from a bad beating. He's never really had a bad beating in the ring. That might get him to thinking more about his future as a promoter [De La Hoya is in his second year of promoting cards for HBO's "Boxeo de Oro"] and as a husband and a father."