Oscar De La Hoya makes it a point to continue calling out the powers that be, who have allow WBC middleweight champion Jermall Charlo to conveniently retain his world title for what will soon be two full years out of the ring.
There have been reports of Charlo dealing with personal issues outside of the ring which have kept him sidelined, but the WBC have never ordered Charlo to make any mandatory defense of the belt nor stripped him of the title over the past couple years, meaning they’ve deemed his absence to be tacitly permissible.
De La Hoya never mentions the WBC directly (although he didn’t shy away from throwing Al Haymon’s name out there as an enabler), but the implication behind his words seem pretty clear given the context.
“Since when have you heard of a fighter hold on to a title for two years without making a defense and nobody’s saying anything about it?” De La Hoya said. “It’s unheard of. You should get stripped. No matter what the issues are, you’re still inactive so the rules and regulations of that particular organization, they should take a look at it carefully and literally come up with a new rule because it’s unheard of. It’s not fair to any fighter that’s the #1 mandatory or who is the interim champion or whatever.”
“I haven’t had any response whatsoever. Everybody has my number. Anybody can get a hold of my, my email, get a hold of Eric Gomez, get a hold of whoever at Golden Boy. I haven’t heard anything. We just continue to do our job, and like I said, any fighter who any organization is protecting, we’re gonna pressure the rankings through the hard work, through the fights they win, through the mandatories. If we have to do that, that’s what we’re gonna do.
“It’s a shame that we would have to do that but if we have to do that, we do it, fight the very best. Look, this fight (Munguia vs Derevyanchenko) was made because nobody else is available. Jaime Munguia wants to fight Charlo. He really wants to. And the fact that people are saying ‘well, the fight was offered’ — bullshit, it wasn’t offered. It was not offered and it was never gonna happen.
“It was just Al Haymon loves to protect, protect fighters. He loves to fight fighters in house and I was happy and glad we were able to open up to door to make Ryan Garcia vs Tank Davis and hopefully that opens the door. I mean, maybe this interview is gonna shut the door again, but it’s like let’s do this, let’s make these fights happen.”
