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More media heat-up for Oscar De La Hoya vs. Manny Pacquiao
By Zach Arnold | December 4, 2008
Related article: Media heat-up for Oscar De La Hoya vs. Manny Pacquiao
The Irish Times recently interviewed Oscar De La Hoya and asked Oscar, the businessman, to describe why Oscar the boxer is mad at Manny Pacquiao:
De La Hoya has refrained from hitting back at Roach, who has Parkinson’s disease, but as the hype escalates his response becomes pointed.
“Freddie is a decent guy, but this is his way of motivating Pacquiao. It’s desperate. And Pacquiao did not show much honour in our past dealings. I had no idea we would ever fight and I liked him as a boxer. I wanted to promote him and we met and shook hands on a deal. Manny didn’t keep his word. He went with [Bob] Arum instead. I’m not vengeful but I might make him pay in Vegas.”
De La Hoya delivers these heavily loaded words with a dazzling smile as if to prove his mastery of blending business with pain. After one of his rare mistakes, when he fought the much bigger Bernard Hopkins at middleweight in 2004, De La Hoya followed his comprehensive defeat by persuading his opponent to join him at Golden Boy.
Trainer Freddie Roach is quoted in The Boston Herald as saying that being a part of De La Hoya vs. Pacquiao is bigger than he could have imagined:
“This is the biggest fight of my career,” the Dedham native said of Saturday night’s showdown between the man he trains, lightweight champion Manny Pacquiao, and six-time world champion Oscar De La Hoya. “When I had Michael Moorer against Evander Holyfield, I thought that was big, but this has outdone it.
“All the press. All the calls. HBO’s ‘24/7’ show. You can’t get away from it. If you don’t feel it you’re not human. I’m human.”
“Sure you feel it,” Roach admitted. “The world is watching this. My skin breaks out. I don’t sleep well. I think sometimes, ‘Did I bite off more than I can chew?’ Then I go over the fight in my mind and I know Manny will win. Handily.”
Michael Rome points out that something feels missing with HBO’s recent 24/7 hype specials and thinks he’s found the reason:
Like many others, I’ve been vocal about how the UFC needs to step up its fight promotion game given HBO’s 24/7 series. The difference was especially striking to me following the Mayweather/De la Hoya series and then the Mayweather/Hatton series. As it turns out, the key to these shows was Mayweather, not the multi-part feature.
I watched the build to Jones and Calzaghe on HBO, and the epic narraration and music just felt forced. The classic narrative from the first Mayweather series of this big mouthed kid against the legend that would shut him up just wasn’t there. The show ended up doing 225,000 buys, or so I thought, Ron Borges over at The Sweet Science says it did under 200,000.
I feel the same way watching the current series with Oscar and Manny. The Manny stuff is fascinating, the Oscar stuff is boring, and they have very little material to work with when it comes to building a narrative for the fight. I knew they were forcing it when the narrarator described Freddie Roach’s car and Manny’s dog in his normal epic tone. Obviously this card is going to do big numbers, but I think it’s more because Oscar is a gigantic star and Manny has his own drawing base, not because of anything the show has done.
Marco Antonio Barrera has proclaimed the De La Hoya/Pacquiao fight to be a circus. Fight Report doesn’t think the fight is going to last long at all. Darren Rovell of CNBC says that efforts by Tecate and Coca Cola to offer rebates to PPV customers for Saturday’s fight is an innovative idea to stir up more fan interest:
It seems like getting $40 off will require some work, since both rebates require an original billing statement for your Pay-Per-View, but I still love the effort. Of course, the critics are going to say, you have to spend to save and in the end it might be a wash. But I’ve never seen something like this before and it’s an innovative way to do something that the rest of the pack isn’t doing. Nice work, beverage boys.
Meanwhile, Ricardo Lopez Juarez in The LA Times discusses the merits of the new bronze statue of De La Hoya at the Staples Center:
De La Hoya hasn’t been the purest athlete in the world. He has become half-boxer and half-businessman, and it’s been a while since he last won a really big fight. Many Mexican boxing fans will never forgive that the East L.A. fighter beat the great Julio Cesar Chavez, twice.
None of that really matters, however. De La Hoya’s legacy is much bigger than any of his detractors.
Boxer Urbano Antillon of Maywood says he is proud not only for De La Hoya, but also “for all the Latinos. The statue tells you that the sky’s the limit for us.”
Topics: Boxing, Media, Zach Arnold | 16 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Maybe I’m just not very tuned in on this, but this event just doesn’t have the feel of one that sells over one million to PPV buyers.
The fight is chiefly going to sell to markets that don’t necessarily do monster MMA business, so that’s part of it. The build reminds me of Oscar/Mayorga except with the benefit of 24/7, and that was just short of a million buys. It should do a good job of motivating the bases for ’em.
I’m looking forward to this fight even though I feel Manny will be to small. I agree that the 24/7’s which featured Mayweather were very very good and this series the bits featuring Manny have been more interesting to me. I think if they can do 800,000 to 1 mil they have done well.
The Jones v Calzaghe fight didnt do many buys but I wasnt surprised by this at all. That was a fight which Jones was never going to win. Manny may be smaller and will find it difficult but you can at least entertain the possibility he will win cos of his recent fight record and being the #1 pound for pound fighter in the world.
If it “only” does a million, will they blame the economy to all the media outlets?
ODLH has shown to have very little left. So little in fact that he needs to fight guys naturally much smaller then him. I think that is why this fight isn’t as big of a deal as his fight with FMJ.
I think this fight does over 1 Million PPV Buys. If it doesn’t, then boxing is in trouble. This is their last big money fight (if ODLH does indeed retire) for at least the next 18 months.
Oscar isn’t talking about retirement at all. They’re actually both talking about fighting Hatton next. Plus a Pacquiao win would probably spark a Mayweather return.
LOL at having “very little left”…you have no idea do you.
Oscar is purely fighting for the big business and to stuff that nest egg.
He’s on 35 and has PLENTY left. He’s just not going to make himself do anything but big money fights and if that means he fights smaller guys who are draws, then so be it. B/C he lost a close fight to the p4p king who juked, jived and ran all fight and lost to B-Hop is not evidence that a 35 year old who rarely took any “beatings” in his career has “very little left”.
I don’t know about anyone else but I already have pre-ordered this fight. Obviously there is a size differential and I seriously hope Manny doesn’t end up like Oscar did when he fought a much larger B-Hop but there is something to be said for Manny’s speed and fearless style. I can’t recall seeing a guy in a bad fight ever. That speaks volumes to me in whether or not I will pay money for a fight on TV or just wait it out and watch the replay on HBO.
There were a few fights that you could guarantee action from… Ward-Gatti, Vazquez-Marquez… and pretty much any fight Manny Pacquiao is in.
Plus the undercard has Juan Manuel Lopez who is incredible. I was stunned by how lighting fast he was able to KO Ponce De Leon.
I do think though they should have gone the route of UFC and had a big name undercard fight especially with the possibility of early stoppage due to size.
The problem with Boxing promoters is they figure one name is big enough to sell a show so why waste another when you could use that other name to sell a different show. That is also why there are so many fights that TV (HBO, Showtime, Versus, etc) can’t carry because there are only so many dates on the schedule that they can air this stuff and only so many names they want to promote.
I find it appalling how latino fans who are rather loyal to the sport get bilked monthly by having to pay to see Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. versus some stiff or another, or have to pay to see one fairly big name Mexican fighter defend an alphabet title against some no name guy. Instead of having a hot card with a bunch of these guys together, these promoters… namely Bob Arum, rip those fans off.
Putting together three guaranteed solid name fights with 2 young up and comer undercard fights would be the best way to go. Won’t happen because Boxing promoters are retarded, but it would help the sport sell more PPVs big time.
Yeah, I read that ODLH is planning on going over to the UK to fight Hatton next spring and try to do it in fromt of 70,000+.
Oscar v Hatton over here would be huge. Oscar wants that fight as he wants to break the record for the biggest live gate.
He also wants to fight smaller people from here on out. Hatton and Pacquiao are tiny compared to B. Hopkins. 😉
I’m looking at around 1.5 Million PPV buys as a success for this show. I think it has a chance even in the down economy to exceed Floyd vs Oscars 2.4 Million.
Henry Armstrong Reborn via upset. To steal from Bert Sugar…
“Sometime, somewhere, some celestial being, once said, ‘A good big man beats a good little man.'” “And I answer with, when Bob Fitzsimmons at 167 [pounds] knocked out James J. Corbett to win the heavyweight title [in 1897]: ‘The bigger they are the harder they fall.”
WAR PAC
For all that give him no shot this is far from the only occasion a smaller man has moved up and succeeded. Ray Robinson was well on his way to beating Joey Maxim for the LHW title had he not fainted from heat exhaustion in the blazing 110 degree heat. There are many more too. It will be a good fight no matter who wins, its no blowout.
Hatton vs DLH could sell out Wembley Stadium to standing room only. It could quite literally put something absurd like 110,000 people in there for the fight.
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