Oscar De La Hoya’s absence during September’s WBC welterweight title clash between Ryan Garcia and Conor Benn was a huge talking point during that fight weekend.
Reports surfaced claiming that De La Hoya was denied a credential for the event, which was promoted by Dana White’s Zuffa Boxing. White denied the report when speaking to media members after the show. De La Hoya has now cleared the air on why he wasn’t present inside T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas to watch his fighter decimate Benn for the second-round TKO.
Speaking to Fight Hub TV, De La Hoya said it simply came down to him not trusting Zuffa Boxing to be professional if he attended the fight (h/t MMAFighting).
“I wasn’t going to show up to be embarrassed,” De La Hoya said. “It was a Zuffa f*cking event. A ‘Zuffa event,’ a ‘Turki event’ [doing quotation marks with his hands]. I was not going to show up and be embarrassed, because that’s exactly what they were going to do to me. I was not going to do that. So I made the wise decision to not go.”
De La Hoya continued by saying there was no real benefit to attended the show, as he felt it would’ve taken away from Garcia’s dominant performance.
“Oh yeah, so much sh*t happened in those dealings, in those contracts, but let’s just say I’m glad I didn’t go because I was going to be set up,” De La Hoya said. “You saw Teofimo [Lopez], how they didn’t allow him in the ring to have a faceoff with Ryan, and embarrassed him not going up there. It’s like, I’m not going to be embarrassed going to an event where my fighter is participating in. I just wasn’t going to do it.
“It would have been embarrassing. It would have created distractions. It would have been a mess.”
De La Hoya and White have been at odds for years. The Golden Boy Promotions head honcho has taken the Zuffa boss to task for how he treats UFC fights, and has been a regular opponent of White’s efforts to revise the Muhammad Ali Act.
What do you make of Oscar De La Hoya’s reason for not attending Ryan Garcia vs. Conor Benn? Sound off in the comments below.
This article appeared first on BJPENN.COM
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