“Death threats” the reason De La Hoya didn’t attend Ryan Garcia post-fight press conference

By Boxing News - 04/24/2023 - Comments

By Dan Ambrose: Oscar De La Hoya says he received death threats the entire fight week for the Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis vs. Ryan Garcia event,  which is why he chose not to be in attendance for the post-fight press conference last Saturday night.

There’s been a massive backlash from fans over De La Hoya and Bernard Hopkins of Golden Boy not standing by Ryan’s side after his seventh round knockout loss to Gervonta (29-0, 27 KOs) at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

Oscar says his security team advised him to leave because of the death threats. It’s unclear if De La Hoya attended the fight.

“My security team told me, ‘Boss, we got to get the f**k out of here’ because I received death threats. You guys don’t know this, but I received death threats throughout the whole week, and they said, ‘It was simply too dangerous.’ So we got out of there,” said De La Hoya on social media.

“Ryan Garcia, I have your back. Bernard has your back. We’re with you 1000%, and you will be back stronger than ever, better than ever,” said De La Hoya.

As for Hopkins, De La Hoya says that he was accused of placing testosterone cream from his hands on Tank Davis during the weigh-in, so “PBC banned him from everything. He couldn’t get inside the ring.

“Once Ryan got hit with that first shot that put him down in the second round, he stopped pushing forward for a while and started fighting on the back foot,” said Jamel Herring to Boxing with Chris Mannix.

“One thing I noticed was Ryan Garcia has a hard time fighting on the back foot, and when he throws his jab, he throws it from the shoulder. When Gervonta started throwing his jab, Ryan was throwing one punch at a time. I was thinking, ‘Gervonta is timing him. He’s reading this.

“Ryan’s output had dropped significantly after that knockdown, and it played in Gervonta’s favor, and he fought a brilliant fight,” said Herring.

“There were a couple of moments for Ryan in this fight, mostly when he went to the right hand,” said Mannix. “After he got dropped in the second round, he started emphasizing throwing the right hand, and he landed a few times on Gervonta.

“I never thought Gervonta was in trouble for a second, not a split second for this fight bothered by Ryan’s power, bothered by his speed. He was in total control during the entirety of this fight, and that’s a credit to his skills, his durability, and his game plan. His whole team had a great game plan coming into this fight, and then he landed a body shot.

“Gervonta has landed some body shots in the past, but when it comes to concussive, highlight reel knockouts, it’s usually head shots like Leo Santa Cruz and Rolly Romero. You see it, and I’ve watched it a half dozen times on replay. It doesn’t look like a big punch. It doesn’t look like he’s sitting down on it at all.

“It just must have been in the absolute perfect place to put Ryan in that position,” said Mannix.

“During the post-fight interview, Gervonta said that he didn’t even know that it landed like that, but he seen the reaction. Ryan kind of pulled away for a minute, and then he went down,” said Herring about Ryan Garcia’s delayed reaction to Tank Davis’ body shot in the seventh.

“We seen it a thousand times with other fighters. They get hit with a body shot, and it takes a while for it to process, and then a fighter takes a knee. I did think Ryan was taking a knee to gather himself, but I guess that body shot did really do some damage. Ryan did say he couldn’t breathe, and that was that,” said Herring.

“I’m not going to question the heart of Ryan. He took this challenge, and he gets credit,” said Mannix. “A lot of guys if they were in his stage of their careers wouldn’t. When Oscar went down against Hopkins, he was badly hurt. He was banging on the canvas the entire time because his body wasn’t responding.”

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