If you were a boxer -- a professional one -- I imagine there would be few people that you'd like to pummel more than Floyd Mayweather and his one-time nemesis turned promoter Oscar De La Hoya.

De La Hoya, the outgoing Mexican-American (East LA, holmes) boxer won the gold medal at the Barcelona Olympics, was Ring magazine's "Fighter of the Year" in 1995 and its top-rated "Pound for Pound" fighter in the world in 1997 and 1998. He has won the championship belt at the super featherweight, lightweight, light welterweight, welterweight, light middleweight and middleweight classes. According to Forbes, De La Hoya is the richest boxer in history, having amassed more than $696 million during his storied career.

Should be a nice golden nest egg, right?

Nope.

"Within couple of years [after retirement], just thinking if my life was even worth it. I don't have the strength, I don't have the courage to take my own life, but I was thinking about it," De La Hoya told the press last week after entering rehab.

"There were drugs. My drug of choice was cocaine and alcohol," he continued. "Cocaine was recent. ... I depended more on the alcohol than the cocaine."

Not content with his admission -- a part of the vaunted Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step system for recovery -- he stepped it up and also admitted infidelity (adultery, in the parlance of the Bible), but with a caveat: "We are obviously not talking a Tiger Woods here."

There's something strange about one superstar athlete referencing another in that way. Is it because only superstars can relate with that sort of thing?

If he had admitted to cheating but juxtaposed it with, say, Tony down the street, would it have meant as much to as many people? Like the press corps would think to themselves as they dutifully recorded De La Hoya's words, "Oh, well, he's not as much as a philanderer as Tony, his heretofore anonymous neighbor ... that's reassuring."

I didn't write this to condemn Oscar De La Hoya -- a truly masterful boxer in his prime who more than held up his end in the ring more times than most can imagine. The winning smile, the belts, the beatdown of Vargas ... it's hard to begrudge the guy. He was like the Derek Jeter of boxing. And there is little doubt that depression, thoughts of suicide and drug abuse are topics not to be taken lightly."

But at the same time, "coming clean" gets a little old after a while. It may sound selfish for me to say this, but you know what, a lot of us have problems, and we don't have $696 million in the bank, nor do we conduct press conferences after a bender. De La Hoya should have kept it in the ring.

A shame.