ESPN’s Dan Rafael reports that Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr have reached a deal to fight on May 5, 2007. The fight will be for De La Hoya’s WBC Light Middleweight title and is the biggest pay-per-view event that boxing has to offer. Mayweather says this will be his last fight whereas De La Hoya has rescinded his earlier retirement talks and plans to fight again after Mayweather.
“Done deal, baby! Done deal,” an excited De La Hoya said. “I wanted it. How could I not be excited? I took this fight because, like always, I always want to take on the best, and Floyd is considered the best in the world. Here we go again. My thinking wasn’t financial. It had to do with it being the biggest event out there and wanting to fight the best and be the best.”
An interesting caveat to this fight is that Oscar De La Hoya is trained by Floyd Mayweather Sr. Junior and Senior aren’t on speaking terms but the elder Mayweather has stated that he did not want to take part in training someone to fight his son. It will be interesting to see if the money changes Floyd S’s mind or if Oscar will be forced to find a different trainer for this fight.
Financial terms were not released but De La Hoya will be making at least $25 million and Floyd will make a career-high as well, meaning at least $10 million. De La Hoya’s 1999 bout with Felix Trinidad set the non-heavyweight record for PPV buys reaching 1.4 million. The record is Holyfield-Tyson II with 1.99 million and Oscar wants to break that record with this event.
“I look at it this way, my fight with Ricardo Mayorga [in May] did 925,000 without the kind of sponsors and marketing we will have for this fight,” De La Hoya said. “We have some heavy dollars in this fight with my sponsors. Not a single soul will not hear about this fight. Can we break the record of 1.99 million? I think we can. We’re shooting for 2 million.”
Two million may be a bit lofty but this is undoubtedly a huge fight for boxing. Mayweather is in his prime at 29 but De La Hoya is only four years older and looked sharp in his last fight against Ricardo Mayorga. The fight will take place at 154 lbs. Floyd will be moving up yet another weight class so Oscar will be the bigger man in the ring. They are two of the smartest boxers in the ring and I’m very excited to see this fight and how they adapt to each other.
Source: ESPN.com
