Oscar’s Smoking Gun of a Tweet Contradicts His Own Publicity Machine

Posted on 04/09/2012

By Ivan G. Goldman

“Everyone don’t forget to fallow (sic) @ringmagazine for all upcoming goldenboy boxing events and all the latest and breaking news in boxing.”

That’s the tweet that went out from company president and spiritual guide Oscar De La Hoya on Good Friday. So in one sentence he disproved tons of Golden Boy disinformation pretending Ring magazine isn’t a propaganda sheet for the company’s boxing promotions. You have to admire Oscar for finally owning up to reality. It’s actually an endearing trait. Only last week a judge decided that Oscar told the truth when he denied assaulting a blonde in a New York hotel room. The judge ordered her and her lawyer to each pay a $500 fine for filing a frivolous lawsuit against him.

When photos of Oscar in drag circulated around the net a few years ago his publicists spun shocked tales of denial. He may even have spent millions to hush up the truth. But then he blurted it out anyway: yes, the photos were real. Golden Boy Promotions is what Disney Corp. would look like if it were built around Goofy instead of the savvier Mickey.

It was ex-Ring writer William Dettloff who made me aware of Oscar’s latest smoking-gun comment. Dettloff, editor-in-chief Nigel Collins and most of the rest of Collins’ crew, including me, were shown the door at Ring last September in favor of replacements who know better than to pay attention to the boxing promoter behind the curtain. Dettloff and his partner Eric Raskin, another Ring alumnus, now run the often-hilarious and always provocative Ring Theory Internet podcast. Yes, that was a shameless plug for my pals. On the other hand, I don’t pretend to be two separate people, which is pretty much what Golden Boy has been saying since it bought the magazine in 2007. I guess the theory goes that if corporations are people, as the Supreme Court and Mitt Romney tell us, why can’t one corporation be two people? But I digress.

A good liar has to keep the story straight, which is sometimes too big a burden for Oscar. So like, we own Ring but we can’t like, admit that this has anything to do with its ratings and all that other stuff? Okay, whatever.

His entourage tries to ignore his gaffes and hope everyone else will too. In fact, despite Friday’s tweet I expect the people around him will stick to their story that the ratings are completely reliable and no, the company would never use the magazine as a mouthpiece to promote Golden Boy fights and fighters over rival promoters’ projects. His people will probably just ignore what he admitted and continue clinging to their fictional message that the magazine is held in an “editorial trust” because as CEO Richard Schaefer said at the outset, “If we do something wrong, we destroy The Ring value and the brand, and that means we made a pretty poor investment.”

I imagine Schaefer and the others will quietly remind Oscar that mum’s the word on the true connection between “the Bible of Boxing” and the company’s promotional mission. What else can they do? How do you inform your boss that everything would run smoother if he’d just butt out altogether? And speaking of butts, if they really wanted to give him good advice they’d have informed him those fishnet stockings and pink panties were all wrong for him. They made him look fat.