Despite his popularity, success, and wealth – by one estimate he has earned in excess of $180 million over his career – Oscar De La Hoya has always seemed to be boxing’s halfway man. The English-speaking press has never completely warmed up to him, for reasons that are difficult to pin down. It might have had something to do with the cognoscenti’s ambivalence toward a fighter who didn’t pay his dues the old-fashioned way, by working his way up through the club circuit.

Oscar did it the new-fashioned way. He was the first boxing superstar never to appear on network TV as a professional. Straight from his Olympic gold medal in 1992 to cable television, and from there, after only a short transition, to pay-per view, he stirred up much resentment among the old-guard boxing writers who never forgave him for not needing them.

He also generated resentment among the boxing-obsessed fans of East L.A., who saw him as gravitating too quickly towards the mainstream. For many, he was too glib and too good-looking to be as good as he was – a mini-Ali devoid of a redeeming political subtext.

Saturday night, Bernard Hopkins, perhaps the best all-around active fighter, did Oscar De La Hoya a big favor with a terrific left hook to the rib cage. The punch, which knocked the breath out of De La Hoya and ended their middleweight championship fight in the ninth round, was merciful: It sent De La Hoya an unmistakably clear message that there is no point in continuing to fight professionally. With luck, De La Hoya will heed the message and spare us the pathetic and familiar sight of a champion – Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Caesar Chavez, Mike Tyson, and Evander Holyfield come to mind – who hung around too long.

There’s nowhere left for De La Hoya to go. There’s no point staying in the middleweight division, where Hopkins is much too big for him. (Although Hopkins outweighed De La Hoya by just one pound, 156 to 155, the natural weight difference between the two is far greater, as we saw in the ring.)

Hopkins is also much too good. He has not lost a fight in 11 years. At 39, he is reminiscent of Jersey Joe Walcott -a shrewd, gnarled, battle-hardened veteran who didn’t hit his peak until he turned 30.Three years ago, Hopkins destroyed De La Hoya’s old foe, Felix Trinidad, so it should have been obvious to Oscar that Hopkins would be a tough old nut to crack.

It’s hard to believe that De La Hoya could have been confident of victory, particularly after needing 11 stitches to repair a cut on his left hand three days before the fight. He insisted afterward that the cut did not bother him, yet his famous left hook was scarcely thrown. It seems much more likely that De La Hoya was simply looking for an opportunity to close out his career in spectacular fashion and wipe the slate on several controversial fights that still dog him. If so, he has ended his career in honorable fashion, loosing to a bigger man.

One wonders what he might have done had he chosen to fight Hopkins the way Sugar Ray Leonard chose to fight Marvin Hagler 16 years ago. That is, slipping, sliding, moving away, constantly retreating, and throwing flurries of what Scottish boxing writer Hugh McIlvanney called “pitty-pat punches.”

De La Hoya, however, has been loath to use such tactics since his fight against Trinidad five years ago. On that night, Oscar clearly outclassed Trinidad, but lost a decision when he spent the last four rounds of the fight retreating (that Trinidad failed to cut off the ring and land a single effective punch over those four rounds didn’t seem to matter to the judges).

Stung by criticism – and by the impression that he wasn’t macho enough to suit the majority of Latin boxing fans – De La Hoya spent too much of his fights with Shane Mosley standing flatfooted and trading punches when retreat would have served him better. Against Hopkins Saturday night, he scarcely retreated at all. In fact, he moved directly into Hopkins, who was perfectly content to jab and counter the lead of the smaller man.

If De La Hoya decides to call it quits, it won’t take the boxing press long to realize how much it misses him. Boxing is predominantly a Latin sport now, and De La Hoya is the only Latin fighter with major crossover appeal. A TV tournament featuring all his opponents, such as Felix Trinidad, Shane Mosley, Arturo Gatti, Fernando Vargas, and, yes, even Bernard Hopkins, wouldn’t outdraw a rerun of Extreme Elimination.

For that reason alone, a lot of promoters are going to be after De La Hoya to stick around. If he does the smart thing and retires for real, boxing won’t exactly die, but the phrase “superfight” may disappear forever from boxing lexicon.