Oscar De La Hoya has a pretty big dog in the boxing fight. Golden Boy Promotions was at the center of this past weekend's fight between Victor Ortiz and Floyd Mayweather, Jr. with Golden Boy promoting Ortiz. Oscar gave a recent interview to FightHubTV where he explained exactly why he thinks that the UFC's success and move to have fights shown on Fox could be good for the sport of boxing as well:
Some quotes from the video (transcribed by Scott Christ of Bad Left Hook):
Some quotes from the video (transcribed by Scott Christ of Bad Left Hook):
First of all, I congratulate Dana White for doing an amazing job. My utmost respect to Dana White, I believe he's a brilliant guy, he's a tremendous person to have in a combat sport. I think they did an outstanding job in promoting the UFC, and look at where it's at now. They struck a deal with Fox, which is amazing for the UFC, for MMA, my hat's off to him. Boxing will be back on network television, I can feel very confident in saying that. Sooner than later, it will be back on network television. When you put good fighters together, people want to watch. And when you have any type of network behind boxing, you will create ratings. And it's a matter of when, and we're working that -- with Golden Boy Promotions, we're working on taking those next steps. What Dana White has done has been amazing, outstanding. I salute him, and keep on doing a great job.
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He's been doing tremendous deals and this goes to show you that Dana White and the Fertitta brothers are brilliant. They know what they're doing, and they've obviously taken it to the next step, to the next level. And who knows where the MMA's gonna go? Sky's the limit.
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And Dana White has done an amazing job. What that can do for boxing is just open doors, because it's a combat sport. And I salute him. I believe he's doing some big things. More power to him.
The idea of boxing returning network TV coming out of the UFC on Fox is something Scott Christ has talked about recently:...
He's been doing tremendous deals and this goes to show you that Dana White and the Fertitta brothers are brilliant. They know what they're doing, and they've obviously taken it to the next step, to the next level. And who knows where the MMA's gonna go? Sky's the limit.
...
And Dana White has done an amazing job. What that can do for boxing is just open doors, because it's a combat sport. And I salute him. I believe he's doing some big things. More power to him.
I mentioned when I did the MMA Nation show on Sunday with Luke Thomas that I'm really rooting for UFC to score great ratings on Fox on November 12, because I think their potential success could cause a network like ABC or NBC or CBS to go, "Hey, this did well. What about doing boxing?" There are no other truly viable MMA promotions right now, but there are a load of established boxers out there, and it would be, of course, truly great to see boxing back on network television. With that as a potential outlet, maybe nobody winds up being forced into sticking a fight like Bernard Hopkins vs Chad Dawson on pay-per-view simply because HBO ran out of budget.