Oscar De La Hoya may look to bury the hatchet with Dana White, but he seems a little less inclined to do so with fellow boxing promoter Eddie Hearn.
In many respects, Hearn is seen as a brash upstart in the world of boxing promotion. 2020, The Matchroom boxing chairman won the greatest coup of his life when he signed Canelo alvarez. This was after Alvarez sued De La Hoya and Golden Boy Promotions. Hearn was then released from the contract. Hearn promoted several Canelo fights but, in May, the boxing’s biggest star suffered an unexpected setback. Hearn lost a unanimous decision against Dmitry Bivol.
De La Hoya lambasts Hearn for making the fight in the first place.
“It was a lose-lose situation,” De La Hoya told Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour. Bivol was not known by anyone. Bivol would be promoted to me to gain a better name because no one knew him before he faced Canelo. He was irrelevant. He was nothing. We were actually going to face him against [Gilberto] Zurdo Ramirez, but Canelo has a promoter now who doesn’t come from the boxing world. He doesn’t know the fight game, and he got Canelo beat. It was the wrong style. Las Vegas was without buzz.
“I was actually there, sitting ringside, supporting Canelo. [and] Eddie Hearn did not do Canelo justice when he faced Bivol.”
Losing the biggest star in boxing is obviously a tough pill to swallow, but De La Hoya contends his disdain for Hearn the promoter is about more than that. De La Hoya won 11 world titles across six weight classes and, at one point, was the most commercially successful boxer of all time. On top of that, De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions promoted world champions for 20 years. He claims that Hearn is a novice in pugilism and has taken over Matchroom Sports as his father.
“He is a character. That’s it.” De La Hoya stated. “The business of boxing, to build superstars, to build champions, it takes a lot of strategy, it takes a lot of insight, knowing the fighters, knowing their styles, and that’s one thing I’m an expert at. When I built Canelo Alvarez, when he crossed the border from Mexico at the tender age of 18 years old and I promoted his first fight, we had a vision. We knew exactly what we had in our hands and we built him to be a monster.
“This is exactly what I plan to do with Virgil Ortiz, Ryan Garcia and the next generation. That’s something that other promoters don’t know. They don’t know the secret of how to build a superstar. There’s an easy formula to building superstars. I have promoted Mayweather and Pacquiao. …
“Look at him, doing fights that don’t mean anything, particularly here in the U.S. Although he might be a good promoter in Britain, and has been building European fighters in Europe, that doesn’t mean anything here in America. I know this is a business and he’s partners with DAZN, and obviously I’m partners with DAZN, but let’s just stay in our own lanes and do our jobs right. Focus on the U.S. and create champions. Boxing will continue to thrive for many more years .”
