De La Hoya on TMT, Garcia-Morales, Lara-Vanes, Kirkland

Aside from discussing Alfredo “Perro” Angulo’s release from an immigration detention center, Oscar De La Hoya spoke to our Luis Sandoval regarding a variety of topics, mainly his thoughts on 50 Cent’s newly minted TMT promotional company, whether Danny Garcia-Erik Morales II is still a go for Brooklyn, and if he cared to comment on James Kirkland’s recent lawsuit.

ON WHETHER DE LA HOYA FEELS THREATENED BY TMT PROMOTIONS:
No.  I wish them all the best of luck.  Obviously, I’m going to focus on what I do at Golden Boy Promotions, and I have no focus on anything else whatsoever.  We have a business that we’re growing at a fast pace.  We have dates.  We have the fighters.  We have something great going for the sport of boxing, and my sole focus is Golden Boy Promotions.

ON RUMORS THAT DANNY GARCIA MIGHT NOT BE FIGHTING ERIK MORALES ON OCT. 20:
We have Danny Garcia vs. Erik Morales II, which is set in stone. We’re looking forward to it.  It should be exciting, and the Barclays Center will be a tremendous, tremendous arena in New York to stage big-time boxing once again in Brooklyn, so we’re very happy to be a part of it.

ON COMPETING HEAD-TO-HEAD WITH TOP RANK ON SEPT. 15:
We have four fights that are going to be explosive, that are going to be exciting.  I will tell you that opening up the show live on Showtime will be Leo Santa Cruz vs. Eric Morel.  We will then have [Jesus] Soto-Karass vs. [Marcos] Maidana.  Then after before the main event, we will have a world title, Jhonny Gonzalez vs. [Daniel] Ponce De Leon, and the main event, Josesito Lopez vs. Canelo [Alvarez].  It’s an exciting card, top to bottom, free on Showtime.  Plus we’ll be having the [Showtime] Extreme [fights] prior to the big card.

ON PROSPECT FRANKIE GOMEZ, WHO WAS SPOTTED AT THE WILD CARD GYM RECENTLY:
Frankie Gomez is back.  We obviously have a valid contract with him.  He’s back on track.  We want to sit down with him next week and work out what his next move will be.  But I’m extremely, extremely excited about Frankie Gomez.  He was and still is a top, top prospect—one of the best fighters out there.  Young fighters out there.  We’re looking forward to move him along and eventually fight him for a world title in a couple years.

ON GOLDEN BOY’S ERISLANDY LARA FIGHTING TOP RANK’S VANES MARTIROSYAN:
Top Rank did win the purse bid.  We’re excited that our fighter Lara will be fighting against Vanes.  It’ll be a fight that I’m very confident Lara will win.  He’s a tremendous fighter who wants to fight anybody, and the 154-pound division is stacked with tremendous fighters like [Cornelius] Bundrage and [Austin] Trout and Canelo and Miguel Cotto, Lara, and [Carlos] Molina, so it’s a matter of fighting all these fighters and seeing who’s the best…Eventually the fighters will fight everybody, and we feel that the 154-pound division is the exciting division today.

ON JAMES KIRKLAND’S LAWSUIT AGAINST GOLDEN BOY SEEKING A RELEASE FROM HIS PROMOTIONAL CONTRACT:
Well I’m just surprised, but all I can say is that we have a solid contract with James Kirkland, and that’s all I can say.

Follow Boxingscene.com’s Luis Sandoval (@truewest007) and Ryan Maquiñana (@RMaq28) on Twitter.