By Edward Chaykovsky

Golden Boy Promotions President Oscar De La Hoya and Mexican promoter Pepe Gomez of Cancun Boxing, are coming together to launch De La Hoya TV - a Spanish-language sports and lifestyle channel aimed primarily at Hispanic men who follow boxing and other combat sports.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the network will be offered to distributors as a free video-on-demand service starting in the spring before transitioning to a traditional channel with a subscriber fee.

De La Hoya is following in the footsteps of other celebs who launched their own channel -  Oprah Winfrey teamed up with Discovery Communications Inc. to launch OWN, Magic Johnson launched Aspire, P. Diddy has Revolt and Jennifer Lopez has NUVOtv.

“Boxing has so many characters and celebrities. ...Why not give the fans the opportunity to experience through De La Hoya TV how their heroes live?” De La Hoya told the paper.

de la Hoya will serve as chairman of the company. Victor Hugo Montero, founder of the Venezuelan network Sun Channel, will run the day-to-day operations as executive vice president and general manager. Gomez will be executive chairman.

de la Hoya made the announcement Tuesday night in Miami Beach at the NATPE TV programming convention. Montero was at NATPE to pitch the channel to cable operators and digital distributors. De la Hoya and his partners were confident the channel would begin rolling out in the next two months.

“This business venture really excites me,” de la Hoya said.