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De La Hoya Explains Genesis of the Mayweather Letter - Boxing News

By Steve Kim

Golden Boy Promotions President Oscar De La Hoya caused quite a stir last week when he penned an open letter for the December issue of Playboy which was a rather scathing indictment of Floyd Mayweather's career.

While on 'the 3 Knockdown Rule' podcast with Mario Lopez, De La Hoya explained how that missive came to fruition.

"So I'm sitting down after watching '8 Mile', Eminem right? So I'm watching the movie and at the end he has to rap against the guy who's the top rapper. He's like the top dog and he's like thinking,' what should I rap about? This guys it.' So he raps about himself and he smashes himself."

And with this, De La Hoya went all 'Rabbit'.

"You read the letter and I talk about my losses, I talk about dancing with (Felix)Trinidad in the last three rounds and losing the fight. Well, that's exactly what the people don't want to see and I talk about the weight draining and I talk about the dancing of Mayweather. I talk about all that and that's just the truth," said De La Hoya on Monday morning, as he was making the rounds promoting this weekend's about between Miguel Cotto and Saul Alvarez.

Some will state that those in glass houses shouldn't cast stones but De La Hoya points out that he didn't include any personal attacks on Mayweather.

"I did not bash his character, not one bit whatsoever. But what does he do to retaliate with me - he bashes my character. I mean, I didn't do that," he insisted.

"You can bash my career for once but not my character. Yeah, look, keep on talking about, 'oh this and that, that bad stuff, dressing with women's clothes and the drugs, the alcohol.'

"But all that was taken care of already. I've already done my homework. I've already done my therapy, I've already done the work to correct that. What have you done?"

Mayweather: De La Hoya Jealous, Fed Me GBP Fighters - Boxing News

By Edward Chaykovsky

Recently retired Floyd Mayweather Jr. was on the receiving-end of a scathing open letter from Golden Boy Promotions President Oscar De La Hoya , who criticized the unbeaten fighter's career in the most recent edition of Playboy.

Golden Boy had co-promoted the majority of Mayweather's fights since 2007 - when De La Hoya and Mayweather traded punches in a fight that generated a record-breaking 2.4 million pay-per-view buys. The record stood until May 2nd of this year, when Mayweather's fight with Manny Pacquiao exploded with 4.6 million buys on pay-per-view.

During their business relationship, Mayweather was mostly in contact with former Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer. There was friction between Mayweather and De La Hoya for the bulk of their run together. Schaefer left Golden Boy last June and Mayweather cut his business ties with De La Hoya by the end of the year.

"I mean, this is the same guy, I'm so boring, but he fed all his fighters to me," Mayweather said to David Mayo of Mlive.com . "So it's obvious he did it because it was all about the money for him."

"I think he's jealous -- jealous. The thing is this, I mean, you see Richard Schaefer is gone. Richard Schaefer built Golden Boy. Honestly, who wants to do business with Oscar De La Hoya? I really care about a fighter's well-being. I'm just saying if Miguel Cotto was my fighter, if Canelo was my fighter, they'd be a lot bigger than they are now."

Mayweather also took aim at De La Hoya's recent comments on Saul "Canelo" Alvarez. Back in September 2013, Mayweather won an easy twelve round decision over Canelo. In several interviews, De La Hoya said Canelo (23 at the time) was too young and inexperienced for such a fight.

Mayweather was critical of that statement and also rehashed De La Hoya's inability to support Canelo during that fight week, because former six division world champion entered rehab a few days earlier to treat a relapse with substance abuse.

"From what I hear, he said Canelo was too young," Mayweather said. "Well, that shows you how he does bad business by putting a kid that's too young in there. Genaro, may he rest in peace, Genaro Hernandez (Mayweather's first championship opponent in 1998) wasn't too old for me (Mayweather was 21, Hernandez 32). You want the big reward, you've got to take risk. That's what we do."

"I'm just saying how can Oscar even speak on something when he didn't even show up? He didn't show up at the Canelo fight. What are we talking about? Drugs, lies and adultery. And dressing in drag. Me, as a fighter, I'm just saying, if I was a young fighter coming up, a guy that's lying, a guy that's on drugs, a guy that we don't know if he's going to show up, he's not 100 percent, I've only got to say one thing -- he couldn't be my promoter. If I was a young fighter coming up, I would not want Oscar De La Hoya as my promoter. Me, as a fighter, I couldn't trust him."