De La Hoya congratulates Garcia, Peterson and other Golden Boy fighters for last night’s show

By Boxing News - 08/10/2014 - Comments

By Allan Fox: Oscar De La Hoya reportedly was unable to attend last night’s fights at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York because of a family emergency being ill, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. But De La Hoya sent a message of congratulations to fighters anyway with the above tweet.

In the main event of the card, WBA/WBC light welterweight champion Danny Garcia (29-0, 17 KOs) annihilated Rod Salka (19-4, 3 KOs) in 2 less than crowd-pleasing rounds. The co-feature was just as bad with IBF 140 pound champion Lamont Peterson (33-2-1, 17 KOs) pounding his lower level opponent 35-year-old Edgar Santana (29-5, 20 KOs) like a drum until the ringside doctor had seen enough and had the fight stopped.

It’s quite fortunate that De La Hoya wasn’t there at ringside to see those fights last night because judging by the boos from the crowd, there were a lot of unhappy fans at the fight. It’s unknown if these fans were unaware that the Garcia-Salka and Peterson-Santana fights were gross mismatches. If so, they found out the hard way by paying to see the fights live rather than staying at home to watch them on regular Showtime cable.

“Congratulations to my Golden Boy team for putting together a great show,” De La Hoya said. “As always you shine in your work. You are Golden Boy.”

You have to wonder whether De La Hoya was serious when he wrote this message or if he was doing it in jest. If he was serious then this is a sign that nothing can get to De La Hoya. He just lets the stuff roll off his back. But you would think that mismatches like this has to bother De La Hoya, because he’s all about putting on quality fights for the boxing fans. Of course, De La Hoya reportedly wasn’t the one that put the Garcia-Salka and Peterson-Santana fights together. De La Hoya promoted the fight, but they weren’t fights that he necessarily made.

De La Hoya needs to make sure that fans are seeing fights that are worthwhile. If he’s going to be the one promoting these fights then he’s got to be the watchdog to keep blatant mismatches like many of last nights were from ending up on his Golden Boy fight cards.



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