By Chris Williams: Oscar De La Hoya, the president of Golden Boy Promotions, believes that the addition of the WBC Diamond junior middleweight belt to the May 5th HBO mega pay-per-view fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. (42-0, 26 KO’s) and WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (37-2, 30 KO’s) really adds to the fight for some unexplainable reason.
De La Hoya said “To have the Diamond belt up for grabs in the…Mayweather vs. Cotto main event adds even more to this great night.”
I fail to see how having the World Boxing Council Diamond strap added to this fight will add anything to it. The Diamond belt was created in 2009 by the WBC, and it’s not like it’s got a long history behind it to where Mayweather or Cotto will get a bump up in appreciation from fans if they win it.
It just looks like the WBC is getting in on the action of the WBA in this fight by throwing their own strap into the mix to get a nice sanctioning fee. I guess De La Hoya sees there being a gain by having it up for grabs because he’s talking about it as if it’s going to actually mean something. I supposed in another 40 years the WBC Diamond belt will have some meaning with fans, but not now.
It’s still a fairly new creation and it just looks like the WBC is trying to spread a net to get some cash from the Mayweather-Cotto event. I’m not so sure the Diamond belt will mean anything in 40 years, because I can see the sanctioning bodies continuing to create paper titles to make even more money. It gets ridiculous with all the different sanctioning bodies and the vaious titles that they create.
I’m surprised Mayweather and Cotto agreed to the Diamond belt being on the line for the fight. Having to pay sanctioning fees on a belt that’s still fairly new seems like a waste of time to me. By doing this it only would seem to encourage the sanctioning bodies to create newer belts to try and put up for fights. I can understand the traditional WBA belt being on the line for this fight or the WBC, if this was for a WBC belt, but to have the WBC pull out one of their belts designed only for special occasions, it just seems like a money grab to me. If Golden Boy and the fighters had said no to this idea, I think it would have been a good thing.
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