By Ryan Burton

Last week an article by Michael Woods ran on The Sweet Science in which Gary Hyde, manager of WBA/WBO champion Guillermo Rigondeaux, said that he believes Caribe Promotions' promotional contract with Rigondeaux ran out in July when co-promoter Top Rank's contract expired.

BoxingScene.com recently spoke with Jared Lopez, who is a partner at the Black, Srebnick, Kornspan & Stumpf, P.A. law firm in Miami, Florida and represents Caribe.  Lopez feels that Hyde should know better than make statements which he deemed to be completely false.

"We have worked with other promoters like Top Rank with the acquiescence of the manager (Hyde) which makes us believe that Mr. Hyde's comments about the contract are completely inappropriate and misplaced," said Lopez

Lopez said that they have discussed promotional offers but that none of them made business sense.  Caribe believes that an agreement needs to be reached with a promotional company that has access to top level fighters in the super bantamweight and featherweight divisions in order to get Rigondeaux the high profile fights that he craves.

"There have been offers that have been discussed with other promoters but none of those offers have resulted in a deal acceptable to the fighter or Caribe as a co-promoter.  The other promoters that Mr. Hyde has said have made offers, at least one of them has never even promoted a fighter, and as far as we know has no fighters under contract, which is really the core issue for Rigondeaux and that no matter what contractual arrangement is signed, the fact remains that Rigondeaux needs opponents that the television outlets are willing to pay for to see fights and that is the issue here."

"None of the other 122 pounders that are of the caliber of fighters that HBO or Showtime believe merit televising are willing to fight Mr. Rigondeaux.  Until we are able to break that barrier and get the big fights, which is what Mr. Rigondeaux wants, any other promoter that Mr. Hyde says can offer Mr. Rigondeaux a contract would not be in a position to produce a fight," Lopez told BoxingScene.com.

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