Oscar De La Hoya is a busy guy. In addition to keeping up with his responsibilites at Golden Boy Promotions, he has committed to taking a trip to visit U.S. troops fighting this country's wars in the Middle East.
It's a week-long sojourn during which he will be accompanied by GB fighters Adrien Broner, Danny Jacobs and Seth Mitchell. A USO spokesman said, “It’s a mission to boost troop morale. The group will participate in boxing clinics, share techniques and extend their thanks to America’s troops serving in the Middle East.”For his part, Oscar tweeted "Just announced today I’m headed over to the middle east with a few golden boy fighters to be with the troops. I’ll be down in the middle east for about a week training with them, signing autographs, I can’t wait maybe even spar with some.”
The former Olympic games gold medal winner and 10 time-champion can't reveal when the group will be on the ground nor the exact locations they will visit. National security concerns, right? For Oscar? Who'd want to target him of all people?
How about Juan Manuel Marquez who is itching to fight Manny Pacquiao and hasn't been successful at getting to that point, in part due to the difficulties between Golden Boy, his promoter and Pacquiao's team at Bob Arum's Top Rank Promotions.
Marquez watched as Sugar Shane Mosley disentangled his boxing affairs from Golden Boy and just like that, he was set up to meet the Pinoy idol in a welterweight championship bout scheduled for May 7 in Las Vegas. Mosley figured out a way to get it done and now Marquez is struggling with that as well.
The Los Angeles TImes rated Marquez as the biggest name in the GB stable, with Mosely's departure, although Saul "Canelo" Alvarez's people might dispute that. Of course it remains to be seen if Canelo acquits himself well in Saturday's bout in Anaheim against Matthew Hatton that will fill the vacant WBC super welterweight title, vacated by Mr. Pacquiao.
The folks at Golden Boy have less than thirty days left to work out a new contract with Marquez after his contract expired in February and it seems that part of that has to entail satisfying his thirst for his last huge payday. At age 37, the window is still slightly open for that if he can manage to get the attention of Arum's people or if GB somehow convinces Marquez that they will make the deal.
Oscar was even willing to personally fly to Mexico to keep Marquez in the fold, but with all his other resonsibilites, including those to the USO, well that didn't happen. We wish De La Hoya a good trip and hope he doesn't have horrible news on the Marquez front when he return.
Source: examiner.com
No comments:
Post a Comment