By Lance Pugmire, Los Angeles Times
Promoter Oscar De La Hoya said today that ongoing negotiations to stage a Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Shane Mosley welterweight fight in May were "not too far away" from being completed.
"Is that fight going to happen? I'm confident it will," De La Hoya told reporters today as he promoted his Golden Boy Promotions' next "Fight Night Club" event featuring a main event between junior welterweights Victor Ortiz of Ventura versus Hector Alatorre Feb. 25 at L.A. Live's Club Nokia.
De La Hoya said Golden Boy Chief Executive Richard Schaefer was handling the negotiations between Golden Boy fighter Mosley and Mayweather, who retained the company to handle his crumbled talks last year with Manny Pacquiao.
De La Hoya, who lost to Pomona's Mosley in a close 2003 decision in which Mosley later admitted that he had unknowingly used designer steroids and energy-boosting EPO in the days before the bout, said he didn't foresee a spat over drug testing like the one that happened between Mayweather and Pacquiao.
Mayweather's lead advisor has told the Times that any Mayweather opponent must submit to random blood and urine tests before a fight.
"I believe Mosley will raise his hand, and say, 'Take me to the lab,'" De La Hoya said.
De La Hoya, insisting that a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight "has to happen" down the road, said his company would push boxing commissions to institute tougher drug-testing policies like those instituted by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. He said trying to strike such a deal in the failed Mayweather-Pacquiao talks was "a good start" that ended as a "missed opportunity."
"You know what's happening out there: all these athletes are taking steroids," De La Hoya said. "I fought two guys on steroids [Mosley and Fernando Vargas]. It's dangerous.
"I would love to see [mandatory, USADA-like] testing to be mandatory. It's crucial. This is not like hitting a baseball or running a sprint. It's two guys bashing their heads in."
While he was at it, De La Hoya weighed in on Antonio Margarito's push to have Texas allow him to fight on the Pacquiao-Joshua Clottey undercard March 13 in Dallas. Margarito had his license revoked by California in February 2009 after it was found that he had plaster-caked inserts atop the knuckle portion of his hand wraps before he stepped into the ring to defend his world welterweight title against Mosley last January at Staples Center. With the inserts removed, Margarito suffered a ninth-round TKO loss.
De La Hoya said Margarito was "messing with someone's life" and shouldn't be let back into boxing unless he "comes clean."
Source: latimesblogs.latimes.com
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