By Rick Reeno

BoxingScene.com received a call from a furious Lou DiBella, who wanted to respond to an earlier story pertaining to the negotiations to make a featherweight fight between Celestino Caballero and Yuriorkis Gamboa for July 24 on HBO. In an earlier story, Gamboa's promoter Bob Arum claimed Caballero priced himself out, and WBC champion Elio Rojas is now the frontrunner to face Gamboa on that HBO date.

DiBella, who promotes Caballero, denies the claim. According to DiBella, Top Rank only offered a package of $250,000 for the fight, which is not much higher than what Caballero made for some of recent opponents, like Daud Yordan. Rojas, according to DiBella, was offered more money than Caballero. DiBella did not disclose the number, but other sources indicate Rojas may have been offered $300,000.

"Caballero is ready to fight Gamboa right now and HBO knows it and so does Top Rank. The highest they offered me was a $250K package for a guy who has two belts and ranked in everyone's top pound for pound list. It has nothing to do with money. They told HBO they weren't interested in the fight. They never made me an offer higher than $250K to split with the fighter, which is absurd," DiBella told BoxingScene.com. 

"And on top of that, Gamboa's manager, Tony Gonzalez, in front of WBA officials, approached Caballero about a month ago in Panama. Caballero said 'let's make this fight' and Gonzalez told him Gamboa is not interested unless there is a million dollars on the table for Gamboa. So you tell me who priced themselves out of the fight? HBO knows the fight is not happening because Gamboa's people are not interested right now."

"In all fairness to Arum, it may be a matter of him not believing there is enough money being offered by the network to make the fight, but then don't dare say my fighter, who is taking the short-end of the stick, with two belts and is a pound for pound guy, priced himself out. They told HBO they weren't interested in the fight and I got that directly from HBO. And Gary Shaw said Rafael Marquez is not interested in Caballero either."

BoxingScene received a statement from Caballero which said the following - "Gamboa, Juanma and [Rafael] Marquez, they all know who the elite featherweight is, and if they all think I'm beatable, then fight me."

Moving forward, DiBella plans to explore a possible fight with WBO super bantamweight champion Wilfredo Vazquez Jr. or a fight with WBA champion Chris John.

"We might take a look at Wilfredo Vazquez Jr. at a catch-weight or see if he's interested in coming up. There are other possibilities out there. Caballero would go up to 130 for the right fight. If Chris John plans on fighting on American soil again, we'll fight him too," DiBella said.