Oscar De La Hoya says Isaac Cruz turned down offer for Ryan Garcia fight

By Boxing News - 01/06/2022 - Comments

By Sean Jones: Golden Boy Promotions boss Oscar De La Hoya says Isaac ‘Pitbull’ Cruz has turned down a “very lucrative offer” to fight Ryan Garcia in April.

De La Hoya says the offer they made to the 23-year-old Pitbull Cruz (22-2-1, 15 KOs) is more money than he made in his last fight against WBA secondary lightweight champion Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis on December 5th.

De La Hoya isn’t saying whether he’ll increase the offer made to Pitbull Cruz or if Golden Boy will walk away. The fact that De La Hoya went through the trouble to post the rejection of the offer made to Pitbull Cruz, suggests that he’s looking for cover so that he’s not dumped on by fans.

Chris Mannix of DAZN reported weeks ago that Golden Boy’s brass wasn’t in favor of Ryan Garcia taking the fight with Isaac Cruz, given that he’s coming off a hand injury and a long one-year layoff from the ring.

If Golden Boy didn’t want the Garcia-Cruz fight, the best way to ensure that it didn’t happen was to lowball Pitbull and then fail to sweeten the offer when it was rejected by his team.

Image: Oscar De La Hoya says Isaac Cruz turned down offer for Ryan Garcia fight

Mannix said that it was Ryan that wanted the fight with Pitbull, not Golden Boy. In that case, Ryan would need to be the one that was on top of the negotiations, making sure that all efforts were being exhausted to make the fight happen with Cruz.

If Ryan failed to do this, it’s not surprising the negotiations quickly fizzled.

We’ll soon see who Golden Boy Promotions picks for Ryan Garcia to fight in April. If they didn’t want Pitbull Cruz, that suggests that they’re going to be looking for someone less risky for their popular social media star.

Isaac Cruz’s promoter Sean Gibbons reacts:

Sean Jones sees Golden Boy picking one of these fringe contenders:

  • Ricky Burns
  • Maxi Hughes
  • Guillaume Frenois
  • Lee Selby
  • Jezreel Corrales
  • Billel Dib

Golden Boy likely drags their feet if Ryan asks to fight a live dog, like Jorge Linares, Masayoshi Nakatani, Richard Commey, or Michel Rivera.

Ryan Garcia is someone that Golden Boy will likely continue to match carefully, keeping him out of harm’s way of the talented contenders and champions at 135.

The 23-year-old is making good coin with his fights on DAZN, and it doesn’t matter that he’s not a world champion and likely never will be.

Ryan’s huge popularity on social media makes him the equivalent of a champion. He has 8.8 million followers on Instagram, and that means a ton of them will subscribe to DAZN whenever he fights.