Mora on Signing With Haymon: Bigger Things Coming

by David P. Greisman

For Sergio Mora, signing with powerful adviser Al Haymon was the best option, particularly given his situation. He’d won three times since his 2012 majority decision loss to Bryan Vera, but the former 154-pound titleholder and current middleweight wasn’t where he wanted to be.

“It’s kind of disappointing that I had a good last year getting two solid wins, and I had to wait until May of this year to get my third win,” Mora told BoxingScene.com in late October. "I’ve been wanting to stay a lot more active, and Lou [DiBella, his promoter] has had a hard time keeping me active. You know these fights, they don’t pay much, and I got accustomed to making six figures for fights. For me to go back to the drawing board is a lot to swallow, not only for myself but for a promoter that’s used to making money as well.

“If we’re on a split and I’m only making these $25,000 paydays, both of us are going to get tired of working these eight weeks camps just for these small paydays. So Lou’s been having a hard time getting me a fight. That’s when I kind of recommended to go the [Al] Haymon route, because I know he has all the big fighters and all the big dates. He [DiBella] said it was a good idea, and if I was on board to go ahead and do it.”

Mora had topped Gregorz Proksa by unanimous decision in June 2013, knocked out Milton Nunez in November 2013 and stopped Samuel Rogers this past May, bringing his record to 26-3-2 with 9 KOs. Mora was already familiar with Haymon staffer Sam Watson.

“Sam Watson’s always reached out to me,” Mora said. “I like what they do for their fighters. They get them paid. They get them on television. They get them the big fights. At this point in my career I want the big fights. I don’t want no tune-ups. I don’t want none of that shit. I just want the big fights, and that’s Golovkin, Peter Quillin, any of the European champions, whatever.”

Mora’s signing with Haymon was announced in September.

“They’ve been treating me nothing but like a professional. They’ve been professional the entire way. I flew out to Vegas to meet the entire team. Of course they were real hush-hush about it, because their plans are for 2015, and we’re still in 2014. They didn’t really divulge much, but from what I see, everything is VIP, everything is top of the notch. They’re keeping it real hushed, but they have a whole social media team that they’ve assigned me to, and they’ve been keeping tabs on me once a week.”

“This is something I avoided my entire career. One, I’m not computer literate. Two, I like my privacy. But without social media, you’re just going to fall behind. I was just falling into obscurity. I needed to swallow my pride and go ahead and do that. Now I have a whole professional team that’s on board and helping me. They’ve created a fan page for me. The millions of the fans that watched me on ‘The Contender,’ those are the ones that we’re trying to tap into. I have to get them back. Once I have high profile fight, I know little by little they’ll start trickling in.”

He made sure to mention his Twitter username, @TheLatinSnake_. But he also needs to get back in the ring. Mora will be back on a Dec. 11 card in California. The ESPN2 part of the show will include Austin Trout and Chris Arreola in separate bouts. Also advertised for the card are Haymon signees Oscar Escandon, Antonio Tarver, Rico Ramos, Edwin Rodriguez, Marcus Browne and Ahmed Elbiali.

Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide. Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com