By Luis Sandoval
Even while Golden Boy has a triple header event scheduled at the StubHub Center in Carson, CA this Saturday night, the question that looms over Oscar De La Hoya is what is going on with his company and what’s going to happen now with the departure of his former CEO Richard Schaefer.
Schaefer and De La Hoya’s relationship became strained when De La Hoya made it his goal to make peace with rival promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank and looked to start working together again. This did not sit well with Schaefer and eventually he stepped down from his position at Golden Boy.
Despite what transpired, De La Hoya still assures he will begin working with all promoters- including Top Rank -going forward in order to make the fights the fans want.
“I’m going to work with anybody and everybody as long as we’re making the best fights happen. We’re going to continue working together giving the fight fans what they deserve. If it’s going to take for me to work with every promoter out there- I mean I can envision Golden Boy versus the rest of the promoters in one night for instance. Those are the type of fights and events I want to put on together. So we can show the fans that Golden Boy and myself that we want to do it for the fans. That’s it, that’s the bottom line,” De La Hoya would tell BoxingScene.
The choice to end the long standing cold war with Top Rank has come at a high price as De La Hoya not only lost his CEO in the process, but it appears he also may have lost the business of the sports number one fighter in Floyd Mayweather.
Golden Boy has promoted all of Mayweather’s fights since 2007 but Mayweather’s relationship with Golden Boy was mainly through Schaefer whom he developed a strong working bond with. Oscar was asked for his reaction to Mayweather initially stating he would no longer want to do business with his company.
“Obviously when you hear something like that it’s obviously a little disappointing but I believe the next day Leonard Ellerbe retracted his statement and they are obviously open to working with Golden Boy. So look, we’re very happy and we’ve done a great job and this is vice versa. We’ve done a great job for Floyd, he’s done a great job for boxing with Floyd Mayweather Promotions and us with Golden Boy Promotions. We’ve promoted his last 7 to 8 fights. We know how to promote. Golden Boy is a machine. It’s a well oiled machine and like I said, we’re moving forward, we’re doing the big events and we have new innovative ideas that I can’t wait to implement,” stated De La Hoya.
Things are obviously still being sorted out at Golden Boy and the void Schaefer left at the company will need to be filled quickly but for now, De La Hoya is concentrated on putting on fights and working with all promoters.
You can follow Luis Sandoval on Twitter & Instagram @Truewest007.
