Oscar De La Hoya fought Floyd Mayweather 10 years ago; Mayweather won by split decision. Ever since then, the 1992 U.S. Olympian turned head of Golden Boy Promotions has had disdain for the man who proclaims himself “The Best Ever.”
The disdain was clear Tuesday during De La Hoya’s appearance on ESPN’s “First Take” with Stephen A. Smith and Max Kellerman. He surprisingly went after Mayweather for wanting to fight UFC superstar Conor McGregor. De La Hoya should have been using his precious airtime to discuss the biggest fight that could be made right now in boxing, Canelo Alvarez vs. unified middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin. Alvarez is Golden Boy’s breadwinner at the moment.
“Even Floyd, after this fight with Canelo and Golovkin, forget about ‘The Notorious One’ (McGregor),” De La Hoya said. “Forget about a fighter who has zero experience, who has zero fights, who has zero amateur experience. Forget about that. Mayweather’s better than that. Mayweather, if you want to fight or have a rematch against Canelo, or a fight against Golovkin, go after them. After Canelo and Golovkin fight, go after the winner.”
It isn’t as though De La Hoya doesn’t have a point. A Mayweather-McGregor fight would be a joke. But when Mayweather has an opportunity to make in excess of $100 million for an easy night of work, who would say no to that? If De La Hoya had been presented with an opportunity like that for Alvarez, there’s no way he would turn it down.
Mayweather, however, is 40 years old, hasn’t fought since a September 2015 win over Andre Berto and has made it clear he will never compete at middleweight. If he did step inside the ring against the winner of Canelo vs. GGG, the earliest the fight could happen would be May 2018 and Mayweather would be 41 by then. You can throw that pipe dream away.
While Golovkin is a star inside boxing circles, he’s still not a top pay-per-view attraction. He drew about 320,000 buys when he faced David Lemieux in October 2015 and Daniel Jacobs in March. Those aren’t great numbers for a fighter with Golovkin’s ability and personality.
De La Hoya needs to put his promotional hat back on. He has to work hard over the next four months to sell Golovkin (37-0, 33 knockouts, 22 consecutive KOs) as a savage wrecking ball and to make the PPV the success it should be.
Talking about Mayweather does nothing except shine more light on Mayweather-McGregor when the only focus should be on Canelo and Golovkin.
Let’s hope De La Hoya has gotten that out of his system, and that he will turn his attention back to where it should have always been
