Garcia admitted to being disappointed that De La Hoya didn\u2019t show up to support him<\/a>. But the boxing Hall of Famer had his reasons.<\/p>\n\u201cI wasn\u2019t going to show up to be embarrassed,\u201d De La Hoya told Fight Hub TV. \u201cIt was a Zuffa f*cking event. A \u2018Zuffa event,\u2019 a \u2018Turki event\u2019 [doing quotation marks with his hands]. I was not going to show up and be embarrassed, because that\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
De La Hoya has a long history of bad blood with Zuffa Boxing CEO Dana White, which has only grown since White moved into boxing. And per reports on the Garcia-Benn event, De La Hoya was denied his appropriate ringside credential for the event as co-promoter of the fight, meaning he would be seated in the crowd. White denied these claims, but De La Hoya certainly feels that had he attended, it would not have been as part of the promotion.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh yeah, so much shit happened in those dealings, in those contracts, but let\u2019s just say I\u2019m glad I didn\u2019t go because I was going to be set up,\u201d De La Hoya said. \u201cYou saw Teofimo [Lopez], how they didn\u2019t allow him in the ring to have a faceoff with Ryan, and embarrassed him not going up there. It\u2019s like, I\u2019m not going to be embarrassed going to an event where my fighter is participating in. I just wasn\u2019t going to do it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would have been embarrassing. It would have created distractions. It would have been a mess.\u201d<\/p>\n
De La Hoya says that embarrassment wasn\u2019t just aimed at him either, but at his fighters, too. While Garcia was the event headliner \u2014 with rumors abounding that the longtime Golden Boy product might make the move to Zuffa at the conclusion of his current deal \u2014 De La Hoya says that his other fighters were given short shrift, not to mention his staff that worked the event.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing is finished until you finish it. And I\u2019m not done yet. I haven\u2019t even started, let\u2019s put it that way,\u201d De La Hoya said. \u201cBut yeah, my personnel were complaining about how they were being treated wrongly and how the event was just not professional. It was bad.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow can you put Alexis Rocha with [Jose] Ramirez on the second fight of the night? They fought at what, 2 p.m.? What an embarrassment for the fighters, and how damaging that can be to the fighter\u2019s reputation. Putting two world-class fighters in the start of the evening is not professional. \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cMost likely [they did this on purpose]. Absolutely, I believe so. \u2018Oh, those are Oscar\u2019s fighters, and they\u2019re Golden Boy? Let\u2019s put them first so nobody will see them.\u2019 Absolutely. I\u2019m not born yesterday. I know how this works.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar De La Hoya has no regrets about not attending Ryan Garcia vs. Conor Benn. Last month, Garcia…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":923219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,711,49,48,701,82],"class_list":["post-923218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-latest-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/923219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}