BoxRec

Oscar De La Hoya says Golden Boy Promotions made an offer to unbeaten WBC middleweight champion Jermall Charlo (30-0, 22 KOs) for a fight with Canelo Alvarez (53-1-2, 36 KOs) last year, but either he or his team rejected the deal.

According to De La Hoya, it was a “lucrative’ offer for the 29-year-old Jermall to take on Canelo, but unfortunately he chose not to take the fight. De La Hoya says that train has left the station, meaning that they’re not going to attempt to revisit the Charlo negotiations to try and restart them.

There remains a great deal of interest from boxing fans in a Canelo vs. Charlo fight, and it’s self-defeating for De La Hoya to not at least try to negotiate a fight.

Jermall Charlo turned down lucrative deal for Canelo fight

“We’re still four months away, so we have a lot of time,” said De La Hoya to spam about Canelo’s next fight on May 2. “I’ve leaving for Mexico right now to sit down with Canelo, and his team for Cinco de Mayo. We offered [Jermall] a pretty lucrative deal to fight Canelo last year. I don’t know who turned it down. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Charlo, but that train has already left and it’s unfortunate.

“From 160 to 175, we’ll decide in the next couple of days,” said De La Hoya in talking about weight class Canelo will fight in for his next fight. “I think when you fight Canelo, you deserve more than what you’ve been normally making. But when you price yourself out, it’s really because you don’t want to fight him. That’s the bottom line.

“When I was a fighter, I was always the A-side, but when fighters wanted to fight me, it was because you’re fighting me because you want to beat me,” De La Hoya continued. “You’re making all the money already, but it’s because you want to beat me, you know? We’re not seeing that today.

“I think we’re seeing these fighters price themselves out, and it’s ridiculous,” said De La Hoya. “Fight for the glory, and then the money will come. A lot of fighters are pricing themselves out too fast, and then the train leaves. Then you have no fight. Just be flexible with that,” said De La Hoya.

Oscar De La Hoya argues that any fighter that prices themselves out of fights only do so because they want to avoid Canelo, but the GBP boss then decides to refrain from disclosing both the timing and also the terms of the deal that was previously offered to Charlo’s handlers.

Oscar also believes that any challengers to the biggest name in his stable should simply compete for the glory and then the money will come if they’re successful, which essentially means accept the small payday, because victory could be highly lucrative.

The only people that benefit from title challengers accepting small paydays are the A-side and the promoters.

I guess there are two schools of thought:

• We’ve previously seen promoters admittedly submit low-ball offers and then subsequently proclaim "duck" whenever they're rejected.

• Alternatively, whilst all fighters deserve to be paid their financial worth, since they’re the ones taking all the risks, they need to invest in themselves and earn the big-payday opportunities, even if it means they have to occasionally compromise their financial demands.

Oscar De La Hoya has deliberately refrained from providing enough information to allow anyone to determine whether Charlo was being greedy or whether he was lowballed. And I have to assume there’s a intentional reason for this, since an NDA is clearly not in place.

In terms of the GBP-Canelo-Charlo situation, I’d like to hear the PBC's side of the story before I formulate an opinion.