Charles Jay
FOR OSCAR, IT’S ALL ABOUT BUSINESS

Oscar De La Hoya is one of those fighters for whom you can honestly say it’s all business.

De La Hoya is easily the biggest star the sport has to offer, even after losing some of the biggest challenges he’s encountered. It’s not unlike the movie business. Some actors are better than others. But by the same token, there are stars who can “open” a movie and some who can’t. Oscar De La Hoya can open a movie, metaphorically speaking.

Oscar is also easily the fighter who has been most successful in carving out a niche for himself as a promoter, especially where it regards his own fights. And he has gone on to expand that role to the point where he has become perhaps the sport’s biggest promoter overall. And as could be expected in the boxing industry, there is a great deal of resentment and ill-will felt toward him because of that.

Well, part of “business” for Oscar is fighting, not just for purposes of earning a payday for himself, but to open up leverage for the company. As long as he is an active, viable fighter he can get HBO, which makes money with him, to do virtually anything he wants them to do.

In the past, that has included making HBO establish a Spanish-language boxing series on its HBO Latino outlet that essentially launched Golden Boy Promotions (GBP) beyond the boundaries of De La Hoya’s own ring accomplishments. Golden Boy was able to use this “output deal” to sign a number of fighters. and HBO bought quite a few shows from the company that it might not have normally bought - all on the strength of De La Hoya’s own drawing power.

Yes, leverage is a powerful thing indeed.

Over time, De La Hoya brought in partners who could bring something to the table, just as a law firm would. These partners included Shane Mosley and Bernard Hopkins - fighters who defeated him but couldn’t in their wildest dreams surpass his box office magic. But HBO carries their fights as well, whether it be on the regular premium channel or on pay-per-view.

Now Golden Boy can stand on its own, though it knows it can always get bigger. It is generally know throughout the industry that De La Hoya is extending his career to keep HBO hanging on for a little while longer, so he can peddle some more Golden Boy fights and sign some more fighters, and maybe extract a long-term commitment the network will be willing to do now in exchange for some short-term satisfaction.

De La Hoya’s company has purchased a prominent boxing magazine, giving him his own media outlet, and also owns the championships that magazine doles out, giving him - you guessed it - leverage in recruiting and signing fighters, especially those who might be contenders already and who don’t want to be shut out of that “title.” And Oscar would NEVER exert any undue influence over his new magazine possession, which is why, when a scandal emerged featuring De La Hoya wearing high heels and fishnet stockings in some stripper/hooker’s hotel room, an event that crossed over into all areas of mainstream media, the magazine NEVER covered it.

Part of “business” is this upcoming fight with Steve Forbes. Not that’s any big secret - this is not designed to be a particularly competitive fight, but rather an infomercial of sorts; an opportunity to (1) produce documentary programming in HBO’s very good “Countdown” series, and most importantly, (2) to pump up the rematch with Floyd Mayweather Jr., which is slated for September.

Unlike that first Mayweather bout, De La Hoya-Forbes isn’t considered by anyone to be the “fight that saves boxing,” but it is a fight that helps HBO’s “World Championship Boxing” package, because it is the first time in quite a while that De La Hoya has fought on its regular channel and not in a pay-per-view offering.

So for HBO, it’s good “business” too.

In the past, opponents in a fight like this have sensed what “good business” was, and have acted accordingly (I’m not naming any names). It’s obvious that Forbes is wise to the way “business” works. Mayweather Jr., who wanted there to be as little a chance as possible that the De La Hoya rematch and payday could be spoiled by an upset, told his uncle and trainer, Roger Mayweather, who also trains Forbes, that he would have to quit the Forbes camp or be fired and miss out on the big bucks in September.

To Roger, it was a no-brainer, because, well, that’s “business.”

Forbes stepped aside without much of a squawk. You see, he understands the natural order of things too.

I’m not sure it would make much of a difference whether Forbes understood any of it or not; although he certainly can hold up his hands well enough to have won a world title before at 130 pounds, he’s also limited enough to have lost to a 21-11 fighter named Grady Brewer on the reality show “The Contender.”

Either way, I doubt he’ll screw up any of the “business” at hand.

Oscar wouldn’t have it any other way. And, I guess, neither would Floyd.