Oscar De La Hoya Explains Why He Let Travis Barker & Shanna Moakler Raise His Daughter Atiana

Oscar De La Hoya is opening up about why he let Travis Barker raise his daughter Atiana.

If you didn’t know, the 50-year-old former pro boxer and Shanna Moakler welcomed Atiana, now 24, in 1999, a year before they split. Shanna, 48, then married Travis, 47, in 2004 when Atiana was 5. Despite getting a divorce from Shanna in 2008, Travis has continued to raise Atiana.

In a new interview, Oscar revealed the real reason why he let Shanna and Travis raise Atiana.

Keep reading to find out more…

“I basically ran away,” Oscar admitted on the Allison Interviews podcast. “I was scared. I was fearful.”

“I did try to be a father full-time for a few years, and it was beautiful,” Oscar continued. “It was amazing to raise a little girl, but there came a point where you say to yourself, ‘Wait a minute. You’re not worthy of this.’”

He added, “You try to convince yourself that you are not worthy of this; that love is not possible in your life, because of what I lived through, not receiving that love when I was a kid. My father never told me, ‘I love you.’”

“My mother never told me she loved me. She never really gave me a hug,” Oscar recalled. “When I would cry, she would start hitting me. That is how bad it was.”

Later in the interview, Oscar looked back at feeling lost after his life started to spiral.

“All you want to do is drink and do drugs and escape,” Oscar said. “Luckily for me, when I was boxing, all the way to the end, it kept me in line.”

Oscar also said that as a father, “I was always there, but not there, you know? It wasn’t your typical relationship with the father and the mother there 24/7. It wasn’t like that, but obviously, she is my daughter and I love her.”

“You have to check in and you worry. Even though I was apart, I felt like I was always close, but I didn’t feel like I was worthy enough to do the job,” he added.

Oscar‘s new comments come shortly after he praised Travis for “stepping up to the plate” to raise Atiana.