Boxing Breakfast: Oscar de la Hoya Talks About Pacquiao-Marquez III

Pacquiao-Mosley Fight Week

It is officially Pacquiao-Mosley Fight Week here at Bad Left Hook. We'll have the usual copious amounts of coverage for the big event, but here are a few highlights coming your way:

• Wednesday: The first episode of the Bad Left Hook Radio podcast, which will focus mostly on the Pacquiao-Mosley fight and undercard.
• Friday: Staff picks for Pacquiao-Mosley.
  
• Saturday: Live, round-by-round coverage and scoring, with immediate post-fight analysis of all four bouts on the card.

Oscar de la Hoya Grumpy About Pacquiao-Marquez Offer

Golden Boy's Oscar de la Hoya is all mad about the offer Top Rank made for a third fight between Top Rank's Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez, who is technically a free agent but still has some ties to Golden Boy Promotions. From BoxingScene.com:

"For me, [making that offer] shows disrespect to everyone in the press, the people and the fans. Because Pacquiao has a fight with Mosley and what does this tell you? That Pacquiao will defeat Mosley? It's not right."

For me, Oscar so loudly acknowledging the offer tells me that he knows his company cannot match the offer -- reported to be $5 million plus incentives for Marquez -- and that they're going to have to let JMM walk without making any more money off of him, outside of that piece of Pacquiao they get. Basically all signs point to Pacquiao-Marquez III if Pacquiao is successful on May 7 against Shane Mosley, who also left Golden Boy to land the fight with Pacquiao.

I don't totally disagree that maybe Top Rank should have waited to make the offer, but at the same time they have to make sure their ducks are in a row. They can give media lip service to "styles make fights" and "you can't count out Shane Mosley" all day long, and maybe a few of the people at Top Rank even believe all of that, and give Shane Mosley a chance on May 7, but either way they're in the Manny Pacquiao business and they want another fight for him this year. Floyd Mayweather Jr. is not an option, so Marquez shoots to the top of the list. So instead of seeing if Golden Boy re-signs Marquez -- and Marquez has negotiated with Golden Boy -- they make an offer.

Also, I get the feeling Top Rank wasn't exactly looking to get this publicized.

On a conference call last week, Shane Mosley was asked about the rumors of Pacquiao-Marquez III and how he felt about the information going public. Mosley's response was, "That’s fine. You have to look to the next fight and the next fight, you have to look ahead of time. That’s what makes Top Rank a great promoter."

When Bob Arum was asked, he responded, "You take whatever Schaefer says as gospel, so we’ll leave it at that. We have no comment. … It’s absurd, because Manny has a very tough fight with Shane Mosley, but just carry on listening to Schaefer all you want, write your stories accordingly."

Todd duBoef of Top Rank has also basically gone with "no comment," noting that he's focused on May 7.

So how can Oscar really be getting his dander up about this when it was his company that put the information out there? It was Richard Schaefer who went public with the offer. And sure, Schaefer had the right to do that, but Golden Boy could have quietly sat on the offer, discussed possibilities with Top Rank, whatever. Instead they took the information public. And fine, I don't care that they did. But if they hadn't, no one would even know. They understand the offer. Shane Mosley is a huge underdog and you can't sit around waiting to look forward. Promoters constantly look forward to the next fight for their star fighters. This isn't new. Golden Boy does it, too. So it's just Oscar being Oscar, really.

Saturday Roundup

• Darren Barker outpointed Domenico Spada in London, while Ashley Sexton barely got past Mike Robinson.
• In Argentina, Ulises Solis emerged thankfully victorious over dirty, rotten Luis Alberto Lazarte in a dreadful rematch of their first dreadful fight. This one had even less action. Solis won a split decision. If they fight a third time, please don't offer that as a fight to get anyone "into" boxing.
• Adrian Hernandez beat Gilberto Keb Baas in a good action fight. The fight was stopped after ten. Best fight of the weekend, but counting the entire week, I give the nod to the John Simpson-Stephen Smith rematch from Wednesday.
• Raul Garcia stopped Rommel Asenjo (TKO-3) and Ramon Garcia Hirales knocked out Jesus Geles (KO-4) on a body shot in their Mexico City rematch.
• Tepparith Singwancha (16-2, 10 KO) upset Drian Francisco (20-1-1, 16 KO) in flyweight action early this morning in the Philippines. Fightnews.com called the decision "close but clear."

Fight Chatter

• Cristian Mijares (BLH #5) will take on Raul Martinez (BLH #4) for Mijares' super flyweight trinket on May 14 in Durango, Mexico. That's a hell of a good fight. If Mijares is really back to the form that at one time had him in the pound-for-pound top ten, I think he outboxes Martinez pretty handily.
• The Pawel Wolak-Delvin Rodriguez Friday Night Fights main event will be on June 24 or July 8, according to Wolak.

After the jump: Link Parade and the Song MST3K Short of the Day

Link Parade!

• Results from the 2011 National Golden Gloves competition. I can only but imagine a time when this would have actually been big news, but the American amateur boxing program and amateur boxing in general in this country has really fallen off.

Song MST3K Short of the Day