Boxing promoter Oscar De La Hoya is clearly more than a little bitter about Eddie Hearn snatching his star client, Canelo Alvarez, in 2020. In fact, appearing on The MMA Hour, he blamed Hearn for Canelo’s recent shock loss to Dimitry Bivol, claiming that the English upstart simply does not understand the fight game.
“It was a lose-lose situation. Nobody knew Bivol whatsoever. I would have promoted Bivol to get a bigger name, because nobody knew who he was before he fought Canelo. He was irrelevant. He was nobody. 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.
De La Hoya Blames Eddie Hearn for Canelo’s Recent Shock Loss: “He doesn’t know the fight game”
Las Vegas had no buzz whatsoever. I was actually there, sitting ringside, supporting Canelo. Canelo is the superstar of the game right now [and] Eddie Hearn didn’t do no justice to Canelo when he faced him against Bivol.”
De La Hoya, who himself earned eleven world titles in his boxing career, pointed out that Eddie Hearn inherited a business from his father with no personal in-ring experience. Without this, says Oscar De La Hoya, Eddie Hearn will never truly understand the sweet science. “He’s a character, that’s all it is.
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
.That’s exactly what I intend to do with Virgil Ortiz and Ryan Garcia, the next generation, and that’s what other promoters don’t know. They don’t know the secret of how to build a superstar. I’ve promoted Mayweather, I’ve promoted Pacquiao, I’ve promoted all the big superstars in the past, and there’s a formula that you need to have in order to build superstars.
Look, he’s doing a lot of fights that mean nothing, especially here in the U.S. He might be good promoter in the U.K., and he’s building European fighters, but that means nothing here in the U.S. 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.
Let me focus on the U.S. market and build champions, and boxing will keep on thriving for many years to come.” Do you agree with Oscar De La Hoya? Let us know in the comments.
