By Lem Satterfield
Top Rank's CEO Bob Arum was not amused by some of Oscar De La Hoya's recent comments that were posted on his personal Twitter account. De La Hoya, President of Golden Boy Promotions, made several public criticisms about Arum. The 79-year-old veteran promoter fired back when asked for his opinion about some of the comments.
"Coming from somebody who understands the sport of boxing I would listen to that criticism, but Oscar never understood the sport of boxing and doesn't today. So whatever Oscar says has no impact on me," Arum told Sergio Machado of Fanaticos [FanHouse Espanol].
De La Hoya blamed Arum for the failure in putting together a mega-fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. He claimed Arum doesn't want the fight to take place.
"That's total nonsense because you can argue over the first situation, the first go around. They had one position, we had another. But on the second go around we gave in to every one of their positions. We were so anxious to make the fight and Mayweather didn't want to fight and even today we will do the fight unconditionally, unconditionally! And all Mayweather has to do is say ('yes') he wants the fight," Arum said.
"So to say that we don't want to make the fight or we are preventing the fight to happen is a little silly. All he has to do is have Mayweather get up and make a statement 'I'm ready to fight.'"
Top Rank and Golden Boy have not worked together since Pacquiao knocked out Ricky Hatton in May 2009. Arum says that he's willing to work with other promoters, but claims there are too many problems in co-promoting events with Golden Boy because they are difficult in every step of the promotional process.
"We work with other promoters but when other promoters get in the way and don't know what they're doing and impact adversely on what we're trying to present to the public; all these new innovations, with special lighting, disc jockey and so forth, we're not going to tolerate it," Arum said.
"Because we want to bring boxing out of the dark ages with production and that's what we're doing and promoters that go along with us like Lou DiBella, we have no problem with. (But) promoters that fight what we're doing like Golden Boy, where we spent a whole afternoon on one fight arguing when they said they didn't want to spend $2,500 for a disc jockey which keeps the crowd really up and going... They just don't get it."
Lem Satterfield is the boxing editor at AOL FanHouse and the news editor at BoxingScene.com. To read more from Lem Satterfield, go to AOL FanHouse by Clicking Here.
