BoxRec

fergusg wrote:It's funny... I supply quotes from one of GBP's shareholders and actively engaged partners, but people discredit his opinion merely because the information being relayed doesn't concur with their gut instinct based stance!

word salad. i'm done

fergusg wrote:It's funny... I supply quotes from one of GBP's shareholders and actively engaged partners, but people discredit his opinion merely because the information being relayed doesn't concur with their gut instinct based stance!

Again actions speak louder than words. I always say that, but people always get so caught up in words. Words don't take up that much energy, actions do. Thus actions define a person much better than their inspiring or rambling nonsense thoughts & opinions.

And I'd still say I think its kinda hard to f#ck up a Floyd Mayweather promotion & Floyd fighting under the GBP banner is about the only thing that made them #1 for awhile.

fergusg wrote:

ReggieDiggs wrote:

fergusg wrote:It's funny... I supply quotes from one of GBP's shareholders and actively engaged partners, but people discredit his opinion merely because the information being relayed doesn't concur with their gut instinct based stance!

Again actions speak louder than words. I always say that, but people always get so caught up in words. Words don't take up that much energy, actions do. Thus actions define a person much better than their inspiring or rambling nonsense thoughts & opinions.

I don’t really know what to say about your comments… the article I supplied clearly states that Bernard Hopkins is good friends with both Richard Schaefer and Oscar De La Hoya. His comments carry no bias and appear to be factually correct.

Bernard simply confirmed what was commonly reported by the media anyway, which was that Richard Schaefer ran Golden Boy Promotions and established that business as one of the sports’ biggest promoters whilst Oscar De La Hoya was merely a figurehead. Schaefer was also a co-founder and GBP’s only CEO.

To be fair to Richard, he did manage to keep Golden Boy Promotions commercially successful whilst the cross-dressing Oscar endured his long-suffering additions to cocaine and alcohol.

When Richard Schaefer left GBP, other key employees departed that company around the same time: David Itskowitch (COO); Bruce Binkow (COO/CMO); Armando Gaytan (Deputy COO); Raul Jaimes (VP); and Nicole Sparks (VP of Marketing).

It’s abundantly clear that Golden Boy Promotions has sold off the contracts for nearly all of their biggest stars in their roster of fighters to Al Haymon, barring ‘Canelo’ Alvarez, so it’s going to be particularly challenging for GBP to rebuild that business to its former glory without the involvement of an experienced CEO and team.

According to ESPN (when Schaefer left GBP), at the request of Anschutz Entertainment Group and private investor Gabriel Brener, De La Hoya had to buyout all their shares in Golden Boy Promotions. This was something that Oscar initially denied, but was subsequently confirmed by GBP spokesman Stefan Friedman.

Even though Al Haymon would have compensated GBP handsomely for ending his fighters’ affiliation with them, Oscar’s company now has a dramatically weakened roster of fighters, an inexperienced team of employees and a lack of wealthy investors running that company, resulting in a distinct lack of leverage when working with other promoters and networks in the near future.

If GBP does eventually succeed, it’ll be because of Eric Gomez (co-founder of GBP who has a solid relationship with Al Haymon).

If GBP does succeed it'll be because Oscar hired the cat who made it successful. Idk why so much desire to act like Oscar is a cardboard cutout with a smile or a Cher impersonator with 24/7 sniffles. Oscar does what a lot of businessmen do. Hire cats to do things in their companies name.

The bottom line is Oscar has made mostly great decisions (inb4cokeorcrossdressingjoke) from the beginning of his boxing career with a 6 digit pro debut purse iirc, to leaving Bob when the time was right, to not coming back once he hung them up & all the stuff in between & after its easy to see Oscar is a winner at life who like most of us f#cked up a couple times (actually our f#ck ups aren't public knowledge typically, so different, but kinda the same). Oscar started GBP. Hired Richard. 7 years later they promoted the biggest PPV in boxing history involving Oscar. Its not like GBP was a bs company til Richard came along. They grew over several years with Oscar as President & its 2nd most successful fighter & Richard as CEO. 7 more years later Richard would f#ck Oscar over.

I believe all those cats you named were Richard affiliated guys so idk what them leaving with Richard means. If Richard hired me or I invested because of Richard I don't think its all that shocking those people jump ship when he jumps ship. In particular when the level of deceit was as high as it was in this situation. If I'm Oscar I'd probably be firing those guys who were with Richard often cuz they probably knew the sneaky sh!t he was doing. So probably a good decision to quit for the employees.

And again with the Bhop stuff. Bhop says a lot of sh!t. Bhop likes to hear himself talk. Who cares. Idk what he said that is worth quoting. He thinks the guy Oscar hired did a great job. Okay. Fair enough. Good for Oscar, Bhop & the guy Oscar hired.

It’s abundantly clear that Golden Boy Promotions has sold off the contracts for nearly all of their biggest stars in their roster of fighters to Al Haymon

And this is complete bullsh!t at worst or speculation at best. You seem like a straight shooter & a guy capable of reading between the lines, but I don't believe you are on board with that take that Oscar just throws his entire roster at Al lol. Although due to arbitration we probably won't know the full story for years or years.

This is from Dan Rafeal's article about Leo going with Al from just last week.

Santa Cruz was unlike the dozens of top fighters Haymon manages and advises who were being promoted by Golden Boy despite not having formal promotional contracts. As part of De La Hoya’s settlement with former CEO Richard Schaefer last month in which Golden Boy received a hefty payment and cut ties to the Haymon fighters, Santa Cruz and a few others Haymon fighters were still under promotional contracts.

http://espn.go.com/blog/dan-rafael/post ... -to-haymon

You don't even have to read between the lines. It says outright that those boxers didn't have promotional contracts with GBP. Now if you don't have a contract with me why do I get paid for "cutting ties". To me this is basically fitting with the rumor that was going around before the sh!t really hit the fan. Richard hadn't been signing guys to contracts (the main rumor) so Al could attempt a leveraged buyout at some point (another rumor floating around). And while GBP/Oscar got screwed over by Richard's sneakiness you couldn't exactly retroactively sign guys to contracts. That wouldn't be fair to the fighters. Thus you give Oscar a pile of money to "make things right". Thats my take on it. Mainly though I don't believe Oscar would have willingly dropped 90% or whatever of his roster like this & if you were to be in that situation why keep Leo, a lil guy & not Deontay or Keith Thurman or even Errol Spence whos not worth much right now, but all have big upsides certainly more than Leo, Lucas & Amir the guys who HAD/HAVE promotional deals with GBP.

benion wrote:
He didn't go out to find Schafer, it was a chance meeting at a golf game. Your don't just go out and find a Richard Schaefer. If it were that easy there would be ten more Schafer's in boxing. Schaefer came from a banking background. He has instant access to billion dollar investors whom trust him from the relationships built during his banking days. Oscar's says he just wants to put on the best fights and I believe him. But he isn't business savvy enough to get it done. He couldn't secure the Cotto fight. He couldn't secure the LSC v. Rigo fight. I'm not even sure the Canelo v. Kirkland fight is a done deal. Oscar is in over his head. His number one fighter, Canelo, was built by Schaefer not Oscar. He went from fighting on Floyd's PPV undercards to filling his own arena on Floyd's PPV undercards to fighting Floyd on PPV to hosting his own PPV. Since Oscar has taken over he's back to fighting on HBO against Kirkland? And he isn't going to fight on May 2nd no matter who Floyd fights. HBO isn't going to waste money going up against a Floyd PPV and Vegas isn't going to go against Floyd. Oscar just sold LSC contract. The rumor is because Haymon was blocking the Rigo fight. The same Rigo that HBO and Arum pushed to the side because of his unwatchable style. Sure, us boxing fans would love to see that fight but the casual fans aren't looking for Rigo. GBP is going broke. The investors jumped ship with Schaefer. What's the point of having those fighters of you can't get them fights? You thick Arum is gonna help GBP by setting up fights? Any fight between the two is going to heavily favor Arum because Oscar is out of his league.

And trust me, there's many more "bankers" like Richard around and it would be foolish to think that Oscar doesn't know anyone who could assist him being he's been in boxing basically his entire life.

So you agree that Oscar didn't actually have contracts & was paid for being f#cked over the possible value of those non-existent contracts if Richard had performed his duties or nah?

fergusg wrote:

ReggieDiggs wrote:So you agree that Oscar didn't actually have contracts & was paid for being f#cked over the possible value of those non-existent contracts if Richard had performed his duties or nah?

I agree to the following…

GBP had a legal claim to the promotional rights of the fighters that Al Haymon took, since Schaefer had a fiduciary duty to renew their contracts, but chose not to. However, I thoroughly understand Richard’s point-of-view, since it made no material impact on the profitability of GBP whilst he was in charge.

Simply put: Al Haymon compensated GBP millions of dollars to relinquish promotional rights to a number of top boxers.

In terms of Leo Santa Cruz, Oscar De La Hoya allowed Haymon to buy out Santa Cruz’s contract for an undisclosed amount.

Technically-speaking, Al Haymon was not a named party in Golden Boy’s lawsuit against Richard Schaefer, but he managed to orchestrate a situation whereby he would agree to purchasing the commodities owned by GBP (the promotional rights for many fighters) for an exchange of monies. This is otherwise commonly known as a “sales transaction”.

This is the reason why I made the following claim:

"It’s abundantly clear that Golden Boy Promotions has sold off the contracts for nearly all of their biggest stars in their roster of fighters to Al Haymon..."

You shoulda been a lawyer. Thats a bunch of well written jibberish you just wrote.

So if there were no contracts what exactly did Al purchase? What sort of promotional rights did Oscar hold? "Shoulda had promotional rights" rights? I don't understand what you mean. Richard didn't screw over Oscar, there were no contracts, yet Al purchased non-existent promotional rights?

And come on bruh, if Richard is signing everyone to a contract except Al's guys you don't see some sketchiness there on Richard's side?

Poor man hooked on drugs deserves whatever evil he brings his way.
Rich man hooked on drugs should be compensated for every dime he wasn't around to account for.

I still don't understand the logic of the DLH apologist. They make it seem like Schaeffer and Haymon were doing some great evil to Oscar.

However, if any of you had to choose between Schaeffer and a coke head like DLH to be your boss, who would you pick?
We should be thanking Haymon and Schaeffer for taking fighters away from a self-destructive person like DLH.

... then again, it's better if half of the relevant fighters are promoted by a guy in between rehab stints. i could understand deeper issues, but the stupidity surrounding simple issues like this is mind boggling.

fergusg wrote: Al Haymon would not have needlessly paid millions of dollars to GBP for them to relinquish the promotional rights to a number of fighters if Oscar De La Hoya didn’t have any legal justification to owning those rights.

You drank the koolaid it sounds like. Idk who's (Al's or Richard's) koolaid, but somebodies koolaid. Or maybe you really hate coke addicts idk.

And why are you spamming me with articles that say nothing along the lines of what I'm talking about? Again? I understand you have incredible abilities in the arena of linking articles. Its impressive. I respect it. I don't need to see it in every post in particular when I'm asking YOU YOUR OPINION in a clear & concise manner.

I think Al would pay millions for "contractual rights" Oscar didn't have, but should've had, to avoid a lawsuit by Oscar concerning some conspiracy with Richard to take over his company. Idk what law that is, but I gotta figure what its alleged Richard & Al planned to do or had done already to some degree warrant some sort of criminal or civil trial against Al (as a non-employee of GBP) &/or Richard (I'm not sure the perimeters of the arbitration process if a court case outside of arbitration was doable or not).

BAD INTENTIONS wrote: However, if any of you had to choose between Schaeffer and a coke head like DLH to be your boss, who would you pick?
We should be thanking Haymon and Schaeffer for taking fighters away from a self-destructive person like DLH.

Sh!t. I'd trust the guy who'll wear some panties when he's high & take some pictures with his lady friend a hell of a lot sooner than I'd trust that guy who's conspiring against the owner of the company who hired him while completely sober.

I like(d) Richard tbqh, he's always seemed like a straight shooter in public, but he clearly gots more skeletons in his closet than Oscar does or is at least faker than Oscar has ever been (I know that was a frequent stance many took with Oscar in the past up til the present & hell I'm sure I used it a time or too myself).

ReggieDiggs wrote:

BAD INTENTIONS wrote: However, if any of you had to choose between Schaeffer and a coke head like DLH to be your boss, who would you pick?
We should be thanking Haymon and Schaeffer for taking fighters away from a self-destructive person like DLH.

Sh!t. I'd trust the guy who'll wear some panties when he's high & take some pictures with his lady friend a hell of a lot sooner than I'd trust that guy who's conspiring against the owner of the company who hired him while completely sober.

I like(d) Richard tbqh, he's always seemed like a straight shooter in public, but he clearly gots more skeletons in his closet than Oscar does or is at least faker than Oscar has ever been (I know that was a frequent stance many took with Oscar in the past up til the present & hell I'm sure I used it a time or too myself).

Diggs this is some dumb shit. THEY ALL HAVE SKELETONS. In that case, I'm riding with the guy who gets shit done.

Conspiring against your irresponsible cokehead partner (not boss), whose behavior would eventually cause the loss of hundreds of other jobs, is not a bad thing.

BAD INTENTIONS wrote: Diggs this is some dumb poo. THEY ALL HAVE SKELETONS. In that case, I'm riding with the guy who gets poo done.

Conspiring against your irresponsible cokehead partner (not boss), whose behavior would eventually cause the loss of hundreds of other jobs, is not a bad thing.

Well thats one way to look at it.

I don't know what Oscar failed to get done. I don't think you guys understand how this works. Oscar can sit on his ass & do coke all day lol. He's the owner & President of the company. He's paid his dues to GBP (I believed he owned 60%-70% of the company to Richard's 9% at one point). Is it irresponsible to sit on your ass & do coke & take pictures with your sidepiece while wearing panties? Sure it is....holy mother of all f#cks it is. Kinda f#cked up in general for his family & loved ones mainly tbqh. I don't for the life of me understand how its okay to try to not do the job YOU (Richard) were hired to do & seemingly try to take over the company with Al Haymon cuz the owner is f#cking up in his personal life. This is some my husband cheated on me so I'm crashing his car then we'll be even angry wife sorta logic.

ReggieDiggs wrote:

BAD INTENTIONS wrote: Diggs this is some dumb poo. THEY ALL HAVE SKELETONS. In that case, I'm riding with the guy who gets poo done.

Conspiring against your irresponsible cokehead partner (not boss), whose behavior would eventually cause the loss of hundreds of other jobs, is not a bad thing.

Well thats one way to look at it.

I don't know what Oscar failed to get done. I don't think you guys understand how this works. Oscar can sit on his ass & do coke all day lol. He's the owner & President of the company. He's paid his dues to GBP (I believed he owned 60%-70% of the company to Richard's 9% at one point). Is it irresponsible to sit on your ass & do coke & take pictures with your sidepiece while wearing panties? Sure it is....holy mother of all f#cks it is. Kinda f#cked up in general for his family & loved ones mainly tbqh. I don't for the life of me understand how its okay to try to not do the job YOU (Richard) were hired to do & seemingly try to take over the company with Al Haymon cuz the owner is f#cking up in his personal life. This is some my husband cheated on me so I'm crashing his car then we'll be even angry wife sorta logic.

Seriously? Oscar has been to rehab multiple times. It's clearly more than just his personal life.

Also, in a promotional company you work for the company, not the boss. Schaeffer and Haymon were acting in the best interest of GBP. The best possible position for GBP to be in right now is the role of Haymon's shadow promoter. If DLH would have stayed in rehab one year longer, that goal would have been accomplished and GBP would be THE power in boxing right now.

Now, the company's roster has been cut dramatically. There are going to be firings. Hopefully, Haymon and Schaeffer do the right thing and try to hire the people leaving GBP.

fergusg wrote:Oscar didn’t want to keep going to Al Haymon to obtain his permission to agree fights, so he "sold" the promotional rights of these fighters in order to rid himself of this annoying burden.

it was settlement of a lawsuit filed by GB and you should read your own links

BAD INTENTIONS wrote: Seriously? Oscar has been to rehab multiple times. It's clearly more than just his personal life.

Also, in a promotional company you work for the company, not the boss. Schaeffer and Haymon were acting in the best interest of GBP. The best possible position for GBP to be in right now is the role of Haymon's shadow promoter. If DLH would have stayed in rehab one year longer, that goal would have been accomplished and GBP would be THE power in boxing right now.

Now, the company's roster has been cut dramatically. There are going to be firings. Hopefully, Haymon and Schaeffer do the right thing and try to hire the people leaving GBP.

No its only his personal life. If he OD's & dies than presumingly his wife would get the company to most likely sell to someone else, probably Al if it'd have happened a year ago.

The company isn't a person Mitt. You work for the people who own the company. Oscar was the biggest owner. And Al had no shares in the company at all. Why does he care if GBP floats or sinks? Its not like its a national treasure or something. GBP isn't a starving kid in the Sudan ffs.

And the roster has been cut cuz Richard wasn't doing his job & signing guys to contracts. If we could see the details of the arbitration I'm sure you'd get the interesting tale of how Oscar got a big pile of money for a bunch of guys he had no promotional deals with. That doesn't make one ounce of sense so something f#cked up went on behind the scenes to warrant Oscar getting paid for rights he didn't have, but shoulda had imho. We'll hear the details at some point I'm sure, but not anytime soon.

fergusg wrote:and my own links that I've supplied actually contain an interview transcript of Oscar De La Hoya explaining the reason why he chose to rid himself of a whole host of big name fighters, which concur to the sentence you quoted.

Do you want me to copy and paste Oscar's words or would you rather actually read the articles I've supplied, so you can judge for yourself and then retract your statement?

Why post more bullsh!t?

What you keep posting makes zero logical sense. Sometimes cats just say sh!t cuz of the PR angle. You don't wanna admit you got f#cked over. I mean fighters rarely say "I got my ass kicked tonight" when they lose. At the end of the day Oscar is a fighter more than anything else. This ain't a much different situation. There is so much that isn't being said here, thats merely being hinted at, at best, its silly to believe the PR angled stuff that is being said.

Things we know
-Oscar wants to work with everyone
-Oscar wants to make competitive & big fights
-Oscar & Richard had a falling out that all the news suggests being about not signing guys to contracts
-Haymon seemingly doesn't like his fighters signed to contracts
-the success & value of a promotion in this era is largely based on having contracts with fighters
-GBP didn't have contracts with apparently all but 3 "Haymon" fighters
-Haymon didn't need to buy contracts for fighters that weren't contractually obliged to fight for GBP
-Oscar didn't have to work with Haymon fighters since there were not contracts linking those fighters to GBP
-Its a little odd a guy is selling & another guy is buying non-existent contracts

It doesn't sound like Oscar needed to make much of a decision on these fighters, but Haymon had some decisions to make before his name mighta got in the news more in a negative light weeks before he's doing all this PBC sh!t. It was in Haymon's best interest to give Oscar $$$ for fighters Oscar didn't have deals with, but shoulda had deals with, if not for Richard's "mishandling" of GBP "potential assets" for Haymon's & to a lesser degree Haymon's fighters benefit.

And I mean if Oscar isn't looking to work with Haymon fighters moving forward he might as well get outta the business. Haymon's got 30ish top ten guys from bantamweight up. Haymon gots about a dozen top players between 140-154 & a bunch of prospects who some will surely be future players, most notability Errol Spence. I don't believe Oscar sells GBP's biggest asset, outside of his own name probably, to avoid working with a guy. And if its that serious of a concern that he's selling off 90%+ of his roster why is he keeping 3 guys at random? If I got that much problem working with a guy I throw all of them at him. Why keep 3? Whats being suggested by some doesn't stand up to a logic test.

fergusg wrote:In terms of Oscar’s motives for selling the promotional rights to so many big name GBP fighters to Al Haymon… I’ve given you as much information as I’m able to… you’ll just have to draw your own conclusions.

I obviously have. I'm just wondering how you haven't came to the same conclusion.

The things we know for certain are:
• Al Haymon paid GBP millions upon millions of dollars to purchase the promotional rights for the majority of GBP’s big name fighters (as Oscar's company claimed that Schaefer had a fiduciary duty to not let their contracts expire - hence, their legitimate claim to owning the promotional rights), which was part of the settlement

Brother. There were no "promotional rights" cuz there were no contracts. I feel like you are Bob talking about Floyd signing the contract when Bob & Floyd both know there isn't any contract to sign or you work for Al Haymon lol.

If anything what Haymon paid for were damages to Oscar for Richard not doing his job & trying to swindle Oscar out of his company with Richard. And to avoid getting his own name in the newspapers & on websites for being part of the shadiness with Richard. Using the logic being put forward here you could for example burn someones house down & than pay them some amount of money to wink wink "buy their house" instead of paying restitution or damages to them.

Basically this all breaks down to you can't have the guy who's gonna be "boxings next savory" to have some Don King type lawsuit get announced or just being in the boxing atmosphere right before the official announcement of PBC. I'm actually surprised more people aren't bringing up the timing of this all going down right before PBC gets up & running. I definitely think there was a strategy to get rid of this problem before it could bite Al & this whole PBC potential empire being built in the ass.

fergusg wrote:After all, why would Al Haymon pay damages out of his own pocket to GBP when he wasn’t actually one of the named parties being sued? There doesn’t seem to be any evidence whatsoever that clearly states that GBP sued Haymon.

Well if I work at a auto supply store & I steal a bunch of mufflers & sell them super cheap to one specific guy its pretty likely despite me as the guy stealing all the mufflers being the guy in the most trouble, the guy who I've been stealing all the mufflers for has some accessory to this crime, most likely. It certainly would look suspect on the guy getting over with the cheap mufflers even if there wasn't some sort of criminal or civil lawsuit to move forward on. If there was or wasn't a conspiracy between the two parties there still would be mumblings of one. Thus if you word this favorably & kill as much as this story as possible it'd be in the muffler buyers benefit. F#ck that was a long ass analogy, but I believe its relatable to this scenario between Oscar, Al & Richard.

It doesn’t matter what “label” you prefer to use, whether “sold”, “surrendered” or “compensated”, the fact remains is that GBP received money from Al Haymon (who wasn’t being sued) to obtain ownership of the promotional rights to a whole host of fighters.

If GBP didn’t have a legitimate and strong legal claim to the ownership of the promotional rights for the fighters they “surrendered” from their stable, why on earth would Al Haymon pay them millions of dollars, when he himself wasn’t being sued? Al could have simply said, “the contracts have expired – so tough luck!”, but he didn’t.

It’s not complicated… and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve told you the very same thing.

You’re right though, Al Haymon’s acquisition of GBP’s fighters does conveniently fall in line with the launch of his PBC business venture. So we at least agree on one thing. ;;-)

I think the label matters. In particular when taking a stance such as yours where you are suggesting this was more about Oscar making a decision to "sell" (LOL) rights he didn't own & not about Al "buying" (LOL) rights he already had to avoid having his name raked thru the mud in connection with Richard's shady activity. The sooner this stuff becomes history the better for Richard, but for Al to as he's the one who seemed to universally benefit from the shadiness Richard did while working for GBP.

I've lost count to how many times you've said virtually nothing in a complicated matter. You need to be a lawyer or a publicist if you aren't either of them. I bet you never take a sh!t. You decide to eliminate unneeded particles from your organic shell using the mechanisms given via centuries & centuries of evolution.

fergusg wrote: That’s quite funny!

I agree with you 100% on this… I do tend to focus on technicalities, I’m far too pedantic and I really do need to be more concise when I articulate my thoughts. So your complaint is justified.

Lesson learned and time to move on!

Ferg,

I am a simple Texan.While you are quite articulate I think the bottom line
is very simple.You need to get laid

fergusg wrote:

tiny_acres wrote:

fergusg wrote: That’s quite funny!

I agree with you 100% on this… I do tend to focus on technicalities, I’m far too pedantic and I really do need to be more concise when I articulate my thoughts. So your complaint is justified.

Lesson learned and time to move on!

Ferg,

I am a simple Texan.While you are quite articulate I think the bottom line
is very simple.You need to get laid

Sorry Ferg I couldn't resist that one

sucracristo wrote:

benion wrote: He didn't go out to find Schafer, it was a chance meeting at a golf game.

schaefer knew oscar's nephew before they ever met and they had a business relationship
on the investment side before ever discussing schaefer becoming involved in boxing,
and oscar offered to guarantee schaefer what he was already making with UBS.
oscar thought schaefer could help on the business end of his new company so he
recruited schaefer into the company.

It was Schafer's wife's nephew. He was friends with Oscar. It was a chance meeting, Oscar wasn't even close to starting GBP. They met in 1995 and started working together 5 years later.

article wrote:"I liked Richard," Oscar says. "He struck me as nice, honest, and sincere. I had a very good feeling about him. Several years after that, I broke away from my old management team. I was very down at that point in my life. I was asking myself, 'What should I do? My future is ruined.' And Raul said to me, 'Let's talk to my uncle.'"

Richard and I had several meetings, "De La Hoya continues. "I had a lot of questions. How do I build what I want to build? What do I do with my money? Those meetings were how I started to get to know him. We'd strategize and I said to myself, "This is a bright guy. He gets it. He understands what I need, and he can help me achieve it."

Schaefer adds to the saga. "Oscar approached me in early 2000," he recalls. "This was not long after he had lost to Felix Trinidad. He said to me, 'I don't know how to ask this. You'll probably say no. But I need someone like you to help me with what I want to do. Would you consider joining me to build a business?'"

"I wouldn't have given up what I had at the bank just to be involved in Oscar's boxing career," Schaefer says. "It was Oscar's vision for more that excited me. The Hispanic market is very strong in the United States. [In the year 2000, consumer spending by Hispanics was 456 billion dollars. That's expected to rise to $985 billion by 2010 and $2.337 trillion by 2020]. I was aware of the immense popularity that Oscar has and I felt that he could become an important brand, particularly in the Hispanic market. Oscar is the Hispanic-American dream come true. He's charming, good-looking, intelligent, and at the top of a Hispanic sport. So I sat down with Oscar and his attorney. I showed them my 1099 [income tax form]. I said, 'This is what I make at the bank. This is what I want you to pay me.' They said yes, and we had a deal."


Initially, Schaefer established Golden Boy Management and signed Jose Navarro to a managerial contract. Then, as he began learning the business, he realized that he and Oscar could accomplish more as promoters. Thus, in 2002, they purchased a boxing promotional company owned by Roy Engelbrecht. "We'd already learned how to run big events by watching Bob Arum," Schaefer says. "With Roy, we learned the boxing promotion business from the bottom up."

In 2003, Schaefer went to HBO and pitched the idea of an HBO-Latino boxing series. "I always go for the top," he says. "When I started opening accounts at Swiss Bank in Los Angeles, I went for the billionaires, not millionaires. It was the same way with Golden Boy. We went right to HBO." Oscar De La Hoya Presenta Boxeo De Oro was the result.

http://www.secondsout.com/usa-boxing-ne ... boy-empire