Oscar De La Hoya's Story to Be Told in 'Puncher to Promoter' Documentary

Puncher to Promoter is an upcoming documentary about Oscar De La Hoya that chronicles the fighter's transformation from his early childhood life as the product of a poor, underprivileged Latino family living in East L.A., into that of an Olympic gold medalist, a world champion and a top promoter.

"What audiences will find is that in the process of Oscar's ups and down, and through the course of his wins and his losses, they can learn -- as Oscar did -- to take failure and use it as a foothold on success," film director Leigh Simons promises. "Through the experiences outlined in Oscar's life through this film, the audience will relate."

FanHouse recently talked to Simons for this exclusive interview below.

Satterfield: How long have you been working in boxing and how did you first link up with Oscar De La Hoya for this project?

Simons: I've been a boxing fan my whole life. I was line producing a series that was on Discovery Health that was called 'Secrets to Super Star Fitness.' I had convinced the network to do a piece on Oscar De La Hoya. We had done pieces with supermodels like Christie Brinkley and actors like Hugh Jackman from the X-Men, and actors like Sylvester Stallone. It was really how actors and famous people trained and stayed in shape.

I pitched the fact that I thought that Oscar De La Hoya was more than just an athlete, that he was a pop icon, he crosses over, he's a symbol for the Latino American success and he's a musician. Why can't we do a piece on him? And they said 'Yes,' and I went up to Big Bear during his preparation for the Campas fight. I was just supposed to do an interview, and shoot some training, and Oscar and I just hit it off.

We had a conversation about how he visualizes each fight, we started talking about the spiritual component and preparation. How winning is winning and losing is winning. When the interview was over, I got invited to shadow him right up to the fight week and after the fight. The piece came out, and it was very successful. After that, I got a call from Richard Schaefer and he said, 'Oscar liked the piece, what else can we do together?'

My answer to them was that rarely, in boxing, had anyone been so famous and so successful as a boxer and a promoter, so why don't we do his life story and wrap it around his transition from being the biggest box-office star in boxing to one of the biggest promoters in boxing? I want to say 45 days later, the deal was signed.

Satterfield: How much of Oscar De La Hoya's story in this film is told through the actual fight footage?

Simons: Oscar has rights to almost all of his fights, so this movie, 'Puncher to Promoter,' really is told through a lot of the footage (Watch clip here).

Also, it involves much of his childhood and ends with where he is today, and really captures his transformation from a poor, underpriviledged, Latin American kid growing up in East LA, to really becoming a symbol for the potential of Latin American success in America.

Satterfield: Will it feature the Felix Trinidad, Shane Mosley, Bernard Hopkins and Floyd Mayweather fights, for example?

Simons: There is really no fight that can be excluded for this, but let me tell you, this movie is just as much about the battles outside of the ring and the battles to succeed in life as it is about the actual battles inside of the ring.

Satterfield: To what extent does this documentary deal with any sort of controversy?

Simons: A lot of people have asked 'if you don't talk about the more controversial issues, what's going to make it a great film?' Well, it's because there's so much more to anyone's story or anyone's transformation -- Oscar De La Hoya's in particular.

As a filmaker, I'm not interested in making a movie that is an 'E True Hollywood Story,' because there so much to Oscar's life and success and his triumphs that we don't need to bring up historical things that have been beaten to death already.

They've heard that, seen that, been exposed to that. That's not the focus of this film. 'Puncher To Promoter' is not that kind of movie and it's not about that.

Satterfield: What have you seen, spending time with Oscar, that will be revealed for the first time to his fans and that they may not already know?

Simons: Oscar is the first 'A' list person that I've become friends with. He's a guy who is inspiring and cares about how you're doing. Getting to know him, first-hand, you realize how hard it is to be famous. It can be overbearing -- not being able to sit in an airport and be anonymous. People always wanting a piece of you.

These experiences can accelerate the development of certain things and retard the development of others. One of the fascinating things that I hope this film will explore is how challenging this is. Yet this is a guy who has to be dragged away from autograph signing sessions, and who still has a hard time saying no to his fans.

Sometimes, I'm freaked out by the frenzied people who want to get a piece of him. We've jumped into limos after almost being mobbed, and I'm like, 'Wow, I bet you're glad that's over,' and he'll just look at me like a crazed mad man who just finished the 11th round and has one more round to go, and he'll go, 'No, I love it.' I could never handle it.

Satterfield: How is this compared to the Mike Tyson documentary?

Simons: I take my hat off to the Mike Tyson documentary as one of the strongest portraits of one of the greatest stories in American sports. It doesn't compare, because this is a success story, and Mike's story is really a story of failure. But where it does compare is that they're both tremendous athletes.

It's the filmmaker's job to find the things in a person's life story that the average person can identify with in living through their own life, perhaps, and improve their life by bringing the audience to another place. There's a lot to be learned from Mike's story, and a lot to be inspired about, and there's a lot to be concerned about. The same is true for Oscar's story.

Satterfield: When can the public expect to see this documentary?

Simons: It is our hope that it will be released sometime in 2010. We're finalizing everything to go into full production on it. We've been shooting the film since Oscar fought Yori Boy Campas. And now, we're putting together the final team to move forward and to execute the documentary.

Once we start getting the rushes on that, and packaging it, we'll be looking for the right strategic partner in a network and motion picture distribution company, and that's all going to be happening simultaneously with the completion of the film.