Oscar De La Hoya was interviewed on local radio here yestarday and announced some big big plans he has for boxing. He talked about Golden Boy Promotions a bit, saying that 4 years into it now he finally understands the business of boxing. He talked about how a lot of fighters are flocking to Golden Boy because of their retirement plan, as it provides financial security for fighters long after they retire. Then he was asked about Bob Arum and he was pretty candid, saying that Golden Boy Promotions isn't driven by greed and money like Top Rank. He said he has a lot dates lined up next year for Golden Boy fighters, spanning all the major networks. He commented a bit on Tyson and his current state, saying it was a sad story.
But then he announced his first step into forming a National Boxing commission, one like Howar Cossell called for 35 years ago. Whoa. He said right off, that his aim was to please fighters and fans, not the other people. He said that real soon he is going to go forward with a series of fighter summits. These fighter summits would call for EVERYONE in boxing to come, fighters, promoters, managers, trainers, judges ect and he would talk about a variety of things. He said it wouldn't be a GBP recruiting summit, he would just educate fighters on how much money they should be getting for each individual fight. If you fight on an ESPN undercard, you should get X amount of money. Stuff like that. But then he talked about fan's perception of boxing. He talked about the scorecard error in the first MAB - Rocky fight and how people thought that was crooked and didn't look right on Oscar's part. Oscar laughed but then he said it was serious because people have no idea what the deal is with judges, promoters, managers ect. First he said that he wants a strict outline on what exactly it takes to become a judge. Whether it's schooling or whatever. Then he wants to know what all the other promoters and managers are doing to protect their fighters. He talked about a lot of his fighters early in their careers were getting more then 75% of their paycheck taken away by managers, trainers and promoters and how it still goes on today.
Basically, he said that these summits would be the first step to REFORM boxing, and CLEANSE it. 2 words that imo aren't to be used lightly. Then he stated a timetable, he said that this is one of the most talented generations in boxxing history and it's a shame that they had to go so long with a dark cloud over boxing, he said he would like to open up a new world of boxing to these fans before the Mayweathers and Taylors of boxing retire.
To bad I couldn't find an audio of this on the KNBR site, it was an excellent interview. He also said that he wasn't scared to make most of the people in boxing mad, as long as the fighters and the fans don't get the short end of the stick.
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