Oscar De La Hoya: Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor bout would damage boxing
Former 10-time champion professional boxer Oscar De La Hoya wrote a passionate Facebook post on Thursday strongly urging boxing fans away from the potential match between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Conor McGregor, saying the “circus” fight would put a “black eye” on the sport.
De La Hoya cited the buildup to a fight as a distraction and felt it would ultimately be bad for the sport, just as it was when Mayweather Jr. finally fought Manny Pacquiao in a 2015 one-sided affair.
“Boxing is starting to dig out of the hole that Floyd and Manny shoveled by waiting seven years to put on a fight that ended up being as dull as it was anti-climactic,” De La Hoya wrote. “But if you think Mayweather/Pacquiao was a black eye for our sport — a matchup between two of the best pound-for-pound fighters that simply didn’t deliver — just wait until the best boxer of a generation dismantles someone who has never boxed competitively at any level — amateur or professional. …Our sport might not ever recover.”
De La Hoya, who has been working to promote a Sept. 16 middleweight title bout between Gennady Golovkin and Canelo Alvarez, went on to write that 2017 has been a “banner year” for top-notch fights that have “reinvigorated interest from the ever-elusive casual fan.” A boxing match that would heavily favor Mayweather would kill that momentum, he argued. He thinks McGregor will get destroyed.
“I fully understand the initial attraction from any fan of combat sports,” he wrote. “But success in one sport does not guarantee success in another. …It’s not like McGregor would be fighting a good fighter, let alone a mediocre one. He would be fighting the best. …I happen to be a pretty good golfer. Could I potentially hold my own on one of the second-tier tours? Maybe. But would I be able to compete with Rory McIlroy, Jordan Speith or Sergio Garcia? Of course not.”
Mayweather, 40, retired at 49-0 as the sport’s No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter, whereas McGregor, 28, has taken the UFC world by storm as the first fighter to simultaneously wear two belts back in November.
“Floyd’s and Conor’s motivation is clear. It’s money,” De La Hoya wrote. “But it’s also a lack of consequences for when the fight ends up being the disaster that is predicted. After this fight, neither of them will need us anymore. Floyd will go back to retirement — presumably for good this time with another nine-figure paycheck — and Conor will go back to the UFC.
“It’s a win-win for them. It’s a lose-lose for us. …We will have squandered another opportunity to bring boxing back to its rightful place as the sport of kings.”
