The Paris Olympics 2024 is underway and Team USA Boxing could do with some inspiration. Who better than Oscar De La Hoya to get them motivated as the games kick off in the ‘City of Light’? Nicknamed “The Golden Boy”, Oscar De La Hoya earned the moniker after he won gold at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain after beating German boxer Marco Rudolph. Meanwhile, Jajaira Gonzales has secured the boxing squad’s first victory in this year’s Olympics, defeating 2016 gold medalist Estelle Mossely of France in the first round.

Team USA has eight boxers competing in this year’s Olympics. Fortunately, the squad has started their campaign with an emphatic win as Gonzales will be heading to the round of sixteen. Silencing a hostile crowd, the California native’s first win was followed by a message from Olympic gold medalist Oscar De La Hoya as he attempted to stoke the fire in their belly with a motivational one-liner.

Failure isn’t an option!

“I heard the crowd booing me and it motivated me to go in the ring and have fun,”  Jajaira Gonzales summed up her warrior spirit with that statement.  Scrapping her initial game plan, she went out on the offensive against the home-grown talent Mossely from the first round.

“I thought she was going to rush in, and so when I saw she was waiting for me to punch, I realized she must have studied me and so I made the adjustment to attack her,” she said. The adjustment worked as she won the first round 3-2 on the judges’ scorecard.

From then on, it was a clean sweep as Gonzalez won every round of the fight. Next, she will be facing Beatriz Iasmin Soares Ferreira out of Brazil on Monday, July 29 at 2:32 ET. Ferreira is a two-time world lightweight champion and was a silver medalist in the Beijing Olympics 2022. As the rest of the squad is yet to compete in their first boxing match, De La Hoya delivered an inspirational message on X that should resonate with the team. “Gold is not impossible you just have to be a GOAT,” De La Hoya’s simple message on X read.

Accompanying the message was a short video footage showcasing moments of his journey to win the gold medal at the 1992 Summer Olympics. At the end of the video was another message, “Wishing our American boxers and athletes good luck in the 2024 Summer Olympic Games.”

The gold medal at the Olympics was De La Hoya’s claim to fame following which he went on to have a very successful professional career, winning ten world titles across six weight divisions. The current Olympic team could take a page out of his life to give their blood, sweat, and tears to realize their dream of winning gold for their country.

Next up on the roster is Roscoe Hill who will be going up against Omid Ahmadisafa, representing the Refugee Olympic Team at 11 a.m. ET on Sunday, July 28. On a separate note, do you know about Jajaira Gonzales’ personal struggles that kept her away from boxing for four years?

Rising from the ashes!

Gonzales has a fair number of accolades to her name. The most prestigious of them is winning the gold medal at the 2014 Youth Olympic Games. Competing in the 60 kg weight class, her aspirations are clear: “Converting my Youth Olympic Games gold medal into an Olympic gold medal would be a dream come true, and it’s the only thing that’s on my mind. I won’t stop until I get it.” However, that wasn’t the case going back even two years.

The breakdown of her relationship with a close family member made her take a hiatus from boxing for four good years from 2018 to 2022. “In 2016, my oldest brother and my relationship just went downhill, like we don’t speak, and I think that really affected me mentally too, where I just didn’t want to box ’cause we all boxed together growing up,” she said in one of her interviews.

Unfortunately, her life took a downward spiral and she began to face numerous physical and mental health issues. She became depressed and put on a lot of weight at that time. Nonetheless, she took a break from boxing to sort out her issues and decided to have a fresh start.

In 2023, she made an impressive comeback and defeated Camila Pineiro at the Pan American Games in Santiago to secure her place in the Olympics. For Gonzales, who has been boxing since she was eight years old, old habits kicked in as she was given another chance by fate to revamp her boxing career at the world’s biggest sporting event.

Nonetheless, tune in to this year’s Olympics to support Team USA’s boxing team as they go for gold.