Eddie Hearn thinks Oscar De La Hoya’s trash talking has gone beyond the point of normal banter.
The Matchroom head now says he is beginning to fear for his safety.
De La Hoya, the head of Golden Boy, has taken multiple shots at Hearn on social media in recent weeks, evincing a level of vitriol not seen in years past (the two have feuded for a while), despite the fact that they share a content partner in DAZN.
“@EddieHearn blowing a sh!tload of other people’s money and showing sh!t for it is ludicrous,” De La Hoya tweeted recently. “You think you can just come here and poach our fighters? Who have you built? Your [sic] a joke. Go back promoting darts[.] [A]t least @LEllerbe (Leonard Ellerbe) and @BobArum know what they are doing.”
In an interview on Thursday, Hearn suggested he was starting to become disturbed by De La Hoya’s recent behavior, likening the promoter to a deranged “stalker.”
“With the Oscar stuff, I did get warned when all this stuff started,” Hearn told iFL TV. “A lot of people said to me, ‘Eddie, when you do become a superstar, you are going to get these fanatics, these fans, that just stalk you and become obsessive.’ I don’t know in America how it works with restraining orders and stuff like that, it is getting to the point, now, with Oscar, I’m starting to get a little bit fearful in terms of my own safety, in terms of that fanaticism for him.
“’Stalker’s’ a strong word, but I think—he’s stalking me. He’s got fights to promote that he’s not even talking about and literally you open up everyday and there’s a new tweet, and he’s trying to ‘at’ Leonard Ellerbe and Bob Arum, who both think he’s a plonker, anyway.
“I didn’t sign up for this. I just wanted to be a boxing promoter and make great fights. I didn’t sign up to have these crazy fans, like Oscar De La Hoya, chasing me around the world, stalking me, thinking about me all the time.”
Hearn—who has floated the prospect of working with De La Hoya on a super middleweight bout featuring Hearn’s client, Edgar Berlanga, and De La Hoya’s charge, Jaime Munguia—went so far as to say that he thinks De La Hoya might be harboring a secret obsession.
“I don’t know what he’s got in the house but there is potential—I think someone needs to go around the house and see if there’s posters, Eddie Hearn t-shirts, I don’t know, like videos playing throughout the day,” Hearn said. “You can imagine he’s got all those plasmas around. What I’m fearful of is walking into Oscar De La Hoya’s house and there’s five or six interviews paying simultaneously. I don’t know what he’s doing. It’s just scary.
“I want people to watch this interview. This is the kind of interview that gets played back when something bad happens. I warned you all about this guy because this happens in this celebrity world when you get these crazed fans. I think someone needs to talk to Oscar because I’m concerned about my safety.”
Sean Nam is the author of Murder on Federal Street: Tyrone Everett, the Black Mafia, and the Last Golden Age of Philadelphia Boxing.