Oscar De La Hoya: ‘Pacquiao Still Possible, Margarito Not!’

August 15, 2008

By Mark Vester - Despite all of the reports that pronounced the fight dead, Oscar De La Hoya maintains that a bout with WBC lightweight champion Manny Pacquiao is still possible for December 6 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Pacquiao officially walked away from the fight on Wednesday after De La Hoya refused to come down from his 70-30 revenue split and rejected Pacquiao’s counter-offer of 60-40. Pacquiao instructed his promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank to begin negotiations for a Humberto Soto bout in November, while Golden Boy Promotions is trying to secure Sergio Mora for De La Hoya in December.

There are problems for both sides. If Pacquiao fights in November against Soto, Top Tank would have to take the lead on the pay-per-view as HBO doesn’t have any available dates. Not to mention, Top Rank is planning a November 1 Showtime pay-per-view featuring Antonio Margarito vs. Joshua Clottey. On the other side, Mora is facing Vernon Forrest in a pay-per-view rematch on September 13 and it’s a very tough fight where many are picking Forrest to win, and even if Mora pulls it out again, there is not guarantee that he walks away without any aches and injuries.

De La Hoya says that negotiations are still ongoing and tried to make a case for why the fight with Pacquiao should happen. He still blames the statements made by Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach, where he called De La Hoya a shot fighter, as the trigger for wanting the fight.

“Negotiations are still ongoing. Manny Pacquiao sent out a statement that he will obviously explore his options and see what comes out of this whole situation, but I think when Freddie Roach came out with those statements, it triggered something in me. And especially when Manny Pacquiao said ‘yeah, I can beat you, no problem.’ I said ‘ok, let’s do it at 147.’ I can make 147 with no problem. I started my career at 130-pounds,” De La Hoya told ESPNRadio1100 .

“I even went up to 160 to challenge Bernard Hopkins and this has been done in the past where lighter guys went up several weight-classes and challenged bigger guys. If you’re a tough guy, come on and bring it on. So that’s how it all started. It caught fire and a lot of people are talking about. I was a big challenge for me and now its up to the negotiators to make it happen.”

“There is no boring fight that Manny Pacquiao is in. It just doesn’t happen. The fact that you have Mannny Pacquiao going up to weight classes, which is not unheard of. I think it would have taken boxing once again to another level and these are the type of events that the sport needs.”

De La Hoya says that unlike Floyd Mayweather Jr., who took 30% to face Oscar last May, Pacquiao doesn’t get the business end of the deal. He feels Pacquiao is too busy looking at the percentage figures and not the amount of money he would make.

“He has to fight maybe 4 or 5 times to even make even close to what he would have made if we fought. You don’t look at percentages in these revenue splits, you look at the dollar amounts, what you are going to make. You look at Floyd Mayweather Jr. He’s one of the fighters who gets it. He’s a tremendous talent, just like Manny Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather understood that his 30% was a lot of money and in order to make that kind of money, he would have to fight 3 or 4 other guys. It makes sense from a dollars point of view, but sometimes these fighters just don’t get it,” De La Hoya said.

In response to the call by WBA welterweight champion Antonio Margarito and all of the people who want to see the fight, De La Hoya didn’t throw the excuse of not “wanting to fight another Mexican,” he says Margarito must first settle his unfinished business with WBO champion Paul Williams, who won a decision over Margarito last year.

“First of all, Antonio Margarito had a great win against Miguel Cotto. That’s wonderful for him. I wish him all the best and I’ve always prided myself on fighting everybody. Fighting the best from Bernard Hopkins to Floyd Mayweather. I just feel personally that Antonio Margarito has some unfinished business to take care of against Paul Williams. I just felt it’s disrespectful to Paul Williams to call Antonio Margarito the best welterweight out there. We cannot forget about Paul Williams. That’s just the way I feel. When I told my CEO Richard [Schaefer] to make the biggest event possible, well I think hands down Pacquiao is the biggest event,” De La Hoya said.

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