Oscar De La Hoya believes the Canelo Alvarez vs. Dmitry Bivol light heavyweight title match last year was a total miscalculation, at least from a commercial perspective.
And the founder and head of Golden Boy Promotions puts the blame squarely on the promoter in charge of that event, Matchroom’s Eddie Hearn.
In a recent interview, De La Hoya insisted that Hearn committed an error by staging that fight at a time when Bivol, a Russian national with elite boxing ability, was entirely unknown to the larger public. In other words, in De La Hoya’s view, the risk/reward ratio simply did not pass muster, in a way that would obviously benefit Hearn’s ace client.
“What I said about Eddie was I would have taken Canelo [in] a different direction,” De La Hoya told iFL TV. “I would have never made Bivol-Canelo. Who in the hell was Bivol? At the time, nobody knew who he was. Who are you going to risk the face of boxing with a guy that nobody knew? Why?
“You go after guys like [WBC middleweight champion Jermall] Charlo. You go after guys like [David] Benavidez, who have a bigger name than Bivol. At the time, Bivol was nobody. He beat the man, now he’s the man. So, look, I would’ve done it differently. Look, he has his ways and I have my ways, so be it.”
De La Hoya, who used to promote Alvarez before they acrimoniously parted ways several years ago, has previously rebuked Hearn for making Bivol-Alvarez but on grounds that it was not a favorable stylistic matchup for Alvarez. At the same time, De La Hoya has also seemingly contradicted himself with his latest comments, especially in light of previous statements in which he criticized Alvarez’s for his seemingly lackluster ambition.
Alvarez (58-2-2, 39 KOs) is set to take on John Ryder on May 6 at Akron Stadium in his hometown of Guadalajara, Mexico. Should he be victorious, Alvarez is expected to fight Bivol (21-0, 11 KOs) in a rematch in the fall.
Sean Nam is the author of the forthcoming book Murder on Federal Street: Tyrone Everett, the Black Mafia, and the Last Golden Age of Philadelphia Boxing.