Richard Schaefer of Golden Boy Promotions continues to bash Bob Arum, a hilarious bit of irony given the seniors' tour undercard he's putting together for Mayweather vs Cotto. Here's what he said to BoxingScene.com's Rick Reeno about his supposed super duper fantasti-card, which will feature a shot Shane Mosley and perhaps a functionally retired Winky Wright, making this the event of the year for 2004:
"I think you really have two pay-per-views wrapped in one. The fact is, Mayweather and Cotto is as big as a fight can be. It is clearly the most dangerous fight that Mayweather has had for a long time. It is clearly, I would say, the most dangerous since the De La Hoya fight. Cotto is coming off one of the biggest wins of his career, a demolition of Antonio Margarito. This is a fight that quite frankly you wouldn't need any undercard because people want to see it [and instead] you could just put a couple of tuneups [on the undercard] and you're done....like most other promoters probably would," Schaefer said.
This is coming from the genius who put together such enormous pay-per-view flops as "Action Heroes" (a whopping 50,000 buys) and Hopkins vs Dawson (an even worse 40,000) in 2011. This from the guy who promoted Hopkins vs Jones II as a pay-per-view, and Mosley vs Mora.
Yup. Only the best from the fan-first gentlemen at Golden Boy Promotions. That damn Bob Arum, ruining boxing.
In fact, if any single American promotional company has done more to put on awful pay-per-view shows than Golden Boy in the last few years, it would be news to me. I know it's fun to believe that damned Bob Arum is just the worst and Golden Boy is hip and fresh (and Noah's Arcade), but nobody has attempted to juice the audience with more crappy $50-70 shows than Richard Schaefer and Oscar De La Hoya.
I guess I could agree that Alvarez vs Mosley is more than a tune-up -- it's closer to a fraud than a tune-up, as they attempt to wring the remaining dirty water out of Shane Mosley's career by sacrificing a 40-year-old has-been fighter to a young star. It's nothing different than what they did with Alvarez against Cintron or Baldomir, except Shane Mosley was better than they were back when he was good and thus more famous.
In fact (again), there were four PPV shows in the last four months of 2011. Those shows were Mayweather vs Ortiz (Golden Boy), Hopkins vs Dawson (Golden Boy/Shaw Productions), Pacquiao vs Marquez (Top Rank), and Cotto vs Margarito II (Top Rank).
Be 100% honest: Where did you feel you got more bang for your buck?
Top Rank has put on stinker pay-per-views, too, of course, and honestly the worst (by far) pay-per-view undercard I ever saw in my life was when the two companies got together for De La Hoya vs Pacquiao. But this act Golden Boy (Oscar is even worse than Schaefer) runs where they pretend they're different than everyone else has grown exceptionally tired.
Since I don't care about Oscar De La Hoya taking a page from the Dana White playbook and revoking credentials to anyone who dares criticize his special company (which he's so in touch with that he didn't know where Peterson-Khan II was being held (he later claimed he "got confused"), I'll just go ahead and say that they do nothing differently than anyone, and they sell you the same crap that everyone else sells you.
To Schaefer, Alvarez vs Mosley is a pay-per-view main event in 2012. And that's part of the problem. He'd love to sell you that thing on its own, gouge you for a little more money. Maybe he should, and hope for it to be the rousing success of so many other recent Golden Boy "blockbusters."
Lucky for Schaefer, Floyd Mayweather Jr, Miguel Cotto and Canelo Alvarez should carry this into being a strong PPV success, even if he fills the undercard with the usual fodder, as he clearly intends.