By Manuel Perez: In what turned out to be a bitter pill for Golden Boy Promotions today, lightweight Manny Pacquiao walked away from an offer of 70-30 purse split with the “Golden Boy” Oscar De La Hoya, turning him down when he refused to budge in any way and come in at the 60-40 purse split that Pacquiao was seeking. Rather than take an offer that was less than what he found personally acceptable, Pacquiao, 29, decided to turn the fight down and look in another direction, possibly against Humberto Soto, a top super featherweight. De La Hoya, however, now has the perfect opportunity to show his fans how courageous he is and choose to fight Antonio Margarito, the WBA welterweight champion, who has been very interested in fighting De La Hoya as of late.

With Pacquiao out of the picture, the obvious choice for De La Hoya to make would be a fight against the dangerous Margarito. Few boxing fans, of course, would give De La Hoya much of a chance at beating Margarito, mainly because both fighters are going in difference career directions at this point. Margarito is at the top of the game, perhaps the number #1 or #2 welterweight in the division, depending on who you talk to, whereas De La Hoya would lucky if he could make to number #5. However, De La Hoya would gain a lot by choosing Margarito as an opponent, because he would be finishing his boxing career on a positive not, going out with a bang instead of slinking off in a less than courageous manner by fighting an opponent like Manny Pacquiao, who is 25 pounds lighter than him.

De La Hoya would probably have little problems signing up Margarito for a fight, even with the same financial terms offered up to Pacquiao. Margarito isn’t too proud to take a 70-30 purse split, because he knows how much money that would ultimately bring him in and wouldn’t be as quick to turn it down as Pacquiao just did. I think Margarito would take the offer, but hopefully there wouldn’t be a change in terms, considering that Margarito isn’t quite as big a star as Pacquiao. I don’t know if he’d be willing to take something much less than 70-30 split, though, because he does have his dignity and won’t much less than the deal that Pacquiao was going to get.

De La Hoya has some soul searching to do, because unless he changes his mind about not wanting to budge on his offer to Pacquiao, he’ll be looking at fighting a bigger, probably more dangerous fighter than the smallish Pacquiao. Due to the massive amount of criticism he’s received, De La Hoya should probably shoot for landing a fight with the most formidable of opponents that he can find. I doubt that light middleweight Sergio Mora falls into that category, so one would hope that De La Hoya doesn’t choose him next.

Mora, due to his lack of power, would be someone that De La Hoya could possibly beat, but the fight would be far than interesting to try and sell to the public. You can’t exactly sell Mora a knockout puncher, because he has very little power to speak of. Trying to predict what De La Hoya will do next is kind of tough, because he’s seem kind of tone deaf as of late for what the boxing public wants to see. His idea for a rematch with Floyd Mayweather Jr. being a perfect example, as was his harebrained idea to select Pacquiao as an opponent. One thing is for sure, if De La Hoya chooses Margarito, he’ll get a lot of respect from boxing fans and from Mexican Americans like myself.

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