Oscar De La Hoya Promised Major Changes, But He Hasn’t Delivered!
CRITICS WILL SAY UFC DOESN’T PAY ENOUGH
San Francisco, CA– I can already hear the boxing purists in denial saying that Dana White and the UFC don’t pay their fighters enough, it’s boring, etc., etc. But they don’t realize that the Fertitta bros. (Lorenzo & Frank) lost $33 million in their first five years of existence. They, and White to a lesser extent, seeing he has 10% of the company, were willing to bet that the UFC would take off, and they were right. It is the fastest growing sport in the world today. That being said, once this Fox Network deal takes off on November 12, there’s a distinct possibility that most boxing fans will realize that what White has said about boxing promoter Bob Arum and his cohorts living for themselves and now, and not boxing’s future, something I’ve been bellowing for some 20 years now, is dead on the money. Thus, although the great Jack Fiske died in 2006, his prediction of boxing coming to an end in 2016, appears more likely, than not.
MOST PEOPLE THINK BOXING IS “FIXED”
The stigma boxing has carried since the beginning of time, were that a lot of the matches were fixed fights. This notion is hammered harder into the heads of the “casual sports fan” when he sees Erislandy Lara get robbed against Paul Williams, or Lucas Martin Matthyssegetting screwed by the judges facing Devon Alexander. That has just carried on the tradition that boxing is “rigged” in the minds of squares (casual sports fans) here in the United States and abroad. Oh, don’t let me forget the win Abner Mares was given by way of a “heist” a fortnight ago over Joseph Agbeko.
BOB ARUM, DON KING, EVEN OSCAR’S GOLDEN BOY CREW, THEY THINK PEOPLE ARE STUPID!
You’ve just watched a 12-round fight and to you it’s pretty obvious who the winner should be. So when the “wrong” guy gets his hand raised, which occurs much too often, you say to yourself, “Who am I too believe, my own eyes or those lying judges?” In closing, Oscar De La Hoya stated that he was going to change boxing, when in fact he hasn’t done *** except continue to perpetrate the hoax created by his promotional predessors on boxing fans. When Mares was “gifted’ over Agbeko, Oscar’s boyhood buddy and GBP matchmaker, Eric Gomez wrote on Twitter, “I love (referee) Russell Mora,” the guy that missed (or allowed, depending on how you’re looking at it) 20 or so low blows thrown by Golden Boy’s Mares.
DAVE MELTZER ON OSCAR DE LA HOYA’S ROLE IN BOXING
Appearing on “Ring Talk,” which is carried live on the Sports Byline Broadcast Network with LIVE video/audio on Facebook’s UStream Live TV channel every Saturday at 11 AM PT. You can catch the delayed broadcasts here at RingTalk.com or at ITunes. On this most recent show, noted MMA and wrestling journalist Dave Meltzer mentioned that he thought the sport of boxing circling the drain. “When this MMA started, especially the UFC in the early part of the last decade, I didn’t think MMA would surpass boxing in popularity. But that happened in 2006, without doubt.” Meltzer continued, “I interviewed Oscar De La Hoya when he was fighting Steve Forbes, and he said he was doing this fight ‘for the people,’ but that the fight would be on HBO which is in only 30% of the homes in the US. So, I thought, how could he be doing this fight for the people?”
CLOSING SHOT ABOUT AS REAL AS IT GETS!
Like I said, Oscar De La Hoya hasn’t done anything for boxing, all he’s done is play cards with the same deck Arum deals from. And because of this, boxing will be likely on life support by 2016, and dead by 2020!
Pedro Fernandez