De La Hoya: I feel bad for Crawford, he won’t go to HOF

By Boxing News - 09/20/2019 - Comments

By Chris Williams: Oscar De La Hoya says Top Rank promoter Bob Arum needs to stop salivating over Saul Canelo Alvarez, and start worrying about his own fighter Terence Crawford. De La Hoya says he feels sorry for the 32-year-old WBO welterweight champion Crawford (35-0, 26 KOs) because he probably will never got to the Boxing Hall of Fame due to Arum’s inability to get him significant fights.

Crawford has been a pro since 2008, and the best name on his 11-year resume is tiny lightweight Yuriorkis Gamboa, who Terence beat five years ago in 2014. That’s the only name on his resume, and there’s no one on the horizon for him to fight. Arum talks about wanting to match Crawford against IBF welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr. in 2020, but many boxing fans see this as a sad pipe dream. Spence isn’t going to cross the street to fight Crawford because he’s with a different promoter and a different network.

De La Hoya: Arum isn’t doing nothing for Crawford

“I think I bit my tongue nine times holding back. This fight was going to be nonexistent a few days ago, but you have to have a lot of patience,” said De La Hoya about the Canelo vs. Kovalev fight. “A boxer and a promoter is like a marriage. You have your little scuffles here and there. You have your little traps. He wins, I win or she wins, I win or whatever. And at the end of the day, you love each other. That’s what boxing is.

It’s a sport where you have your ups and downs. You bite your tongue, and you have to have a lot of patience. Like I said, we have a huge target on our backs. Everybody wants a piece of us. You just have to strategize and be smarter than them. Bob Arum, he was fantasizing over Canelo.

He was salivating over him, right? He has [Terence] Crawford. What is he doing for him? He’s not doing anything for him. I actually feel bad that Crawford might not ever get to the Hall of Fame one day because Bob can’t get him a fight,” said De La Hoya.

It’s interesting that De La Hoya says that Arum is salivating over Saul Alvarez. De La Hoya makes it clear during the interview that Canelo, 29, isn’t going to be leaving Team Golden Boy Promotions anytime soon. That sounds like Canelo might be locked in to a long term contract. That would be bad news for Arum, because it won’t be worth it for him to wait 4 to 5 years for Canelo’s contract with Golden Boy to expire. By then, Canelo will likely be shot and nowhere near the fighter he is today.

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Arum would get an important chess piece if he could sign Canelo

It would be a big smile on Arum’s face if he could sign Canelo, as it would give him a replacement for Manny Pacquiao. There’s been a huge void left in the Top Rank stable since Pacquiao left the promotional company not long after his loss to Jeff Horn. Arum needs to sign Canelo soon while his physical tools are still intact.

Canelo is one of those fighters that excels due to his hand speed. Those types of fighters struggle when their speed goes, and that soon could be his destiny. Canelo might have another five years at best before he loses a few notches with his hand speed. Once that happens he could be another Roy Jones Jr. with him getting knocked out repeatedly. It’s doubtful Arum will want Canelo then, but you never know. He’s doing a wonderful job with the soft match-matching he’s done with heavyweight Tyson Fury since signing him.

De La Hoya: Arum, stop salivating and leave our fighters alone

“Look, Canelo is with us,” said De La Hoya. “He’s with Team Golden Boy for many more years Ryan Garcia is with Team Golden Boy for many more years. Bob Arum, stop salivating. Leave our fighters alone and let us do our job. We talked it over, and re-signed him to a very lucrative contract, and he’s really happy,” said De La Hoya about Ryan Garcia.

“He’s going to fight on November 2nd on the undercard of [Romero] Duno,” said De La Hoya about Garcia fighting on the Saul Canelo Alvarez vs. Sergey Kovalev undercard on November 2 on DAZN in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Arum hasn’t done a lot with Crawford in terms of matching him against big names. If he were to get his hands on Canelo, one can only imagine the type of fights he’d be setting him up with year after year. These would be some of the logical fights Arum would make for Canelo:

  • Ryota Murata
  • Rob Brant
  • Jesse Hart
  • Gilberto Ramirez
  • Carlos Adames
  • Terence Crawford
  • Esquiva Falcao
  • Sergey Kovalev – rematch
  • Oleksandr Gvozyk
  • Artur Beterbiev