Bernard Hopkins 

vs. Oscar De La Hoya, billed as "History", was a professional boxing match

contested on September 18, 2004 for Hopkins' WBA, WBC, IBF, The Ring and lineal middleweight
championships, and De La Hoya's WBO middleweight championship.

After losing the WBA and WBC light middleweight titles to Shane Mosley in September 2003, five-
division world champion Oscar De La Hoya decided to move up to the middleweight division to
challenge undisputed middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins, who had been middleweight champion
for nearly a decade and had not lost a fight in over 11 years. Before the two would fight each other, De
La Hoya and Hopkins would first have to get past Felix Sturm and Robert Allen, respectively. In a
doubleheader event broadcast by HBO pay-per-view, Hopkins easily defeated Allen by a
lopsided unanimous decision to retain his undisputed title, but De La Hoya struggled in his match with
Sturm and only narrowly escaped with a unanimous decision (115–113 on all three scorecards) to
capture Sturm's WBO middleweight title (becoming the first six-division champion in boxing history) and
officially put his anticipated match with Hopkins on. [1]
Many, including Sturm himself, felt that De La Hoya had clearly lost the fight and had been gifted the
decision in order for the lucrative Hopkins–De La Hoya bout to continue forward. Sturm and his
promoter filed a protest with the Nevada Athletic Commission in attempt to have decision overturned,
but commission head Marc Ratner turned it down, stating there was no basis for a review. [2]
With Sturm's protest out of the way, De La Hoya and Hopkins would proceed with their fight and agreed
to a catchweight – a rarity for championship fights – of 158 pounds, in order to level the playing fields
for the smaller De La Hoya, who had only one middleweight bout to his credit. Because of Hopkins' size
advantage and his vast experience in the middleweight division, De La Hoya, for the first time in his
professional career, was considered the "underdog", [3] with the odds makers in Las Vegas favoring
Hopkins at 2–1. De La Hoya, however, was scheduled to make a career high $30 million, while Hopkins
would net $10 million, also a career high.[3]