De La Hoya and Gamboa Confuse Fans While Puerto Rico Will Give Us Answers

This Tuesday, March 6th, was supposed to be not only a Super Tuesday for the politicians, but also a Super Tuesday for the sport of boxing as well.

Boxing superstar turned promoter Oscar De La Hoya had the boxing world's attention as he sent out a very mysterious, yet compelling statement via his Twitter account on Thursday, March 1:

"

Major announcement soon to come that will shake the boxing industry in a major way.

"

Oscar is the face and president of Golden Boy promotions the fastest growing fight promotions company in the sport of boxing, not to mention he has over 350,000 followers on Twitter, so when he made such a bold statement like that, everyone started to speculate just what was this earth-shaking news?

Fights fans, bloggers and major media outlets began making educated guesses as to what the big news might be. The two most common guesses was it had something to do with a big comeback fight including himself and a big-named opponent, or a major deal was made with boxing returning to a major television network on prime time much like how the UFC had come to Fox.

Finally, Tuesday came around, and everyone was awaiting just what Oscar would announce via Twitter.

Then in the afternoon, Oscar finally made the following statement on Twitter:

"

As I enjoy my 10 months of being sober today, I come to realize without a cloud over my head that I will never ever fight again

"

Many fight fans and media began to mock and express how let down they were that Oscar had much of the boxing world on their feet awaiting some kind of huge news to be announced and were not satisfied to see it was something that they already knew—Oscar would remain retired.

For the record, I personally applaud Oscar for being strong and honest enough to achieve 10 months of sobriety. He has every right to announce that to his legion of followers on Twitter.

However, Oscar must realize he is a very powerful person, and this whole situation proved just that. Oscar should be a bit more careful with his choice of words since many media outlets and fans assumed he was going to announce a major breaking news statement on Tuesday, not a major personal achievement that afternoon.

But the boxing world was not only confused and let down by the Golden Boy alone that day. Earlier on the same day, top undefeated Cuban star Yuriorkis Gamboa also left the boxing world further confused as he again refused to show up for the second time and final press conference for his highly anticipated fight with undefeated lightweight champion Brandon Rios.

Many felt the press conference was going to announce a new opponent for Rios or even cancellation of the fight date all together, but Top Rank president Todd Duboef stood at the podium and stated that the fight will go on as planned with a $100,000 bonus going to the winner of the fight.

But the fight fans and media were not any more assured as to if Gamboa will actually indeed be fighting Brandon Rios on April 14th as planned since he was a no show twice in the fight's only two press conferences to promote the fight.

Why is this such a big deal you may ask? The reason it's such a big deal is that both Rios and Gamboa are two of the most exciting fighters in the sport of boxing today. Both are undefeated, proven champions and have entertaining crowd pleasing fight styles that win over new casual fans.

So essentially, this is the type of fight that could save boxing and produce the next superstar to replace the Manny Pacquiao's of the game once they retire.

Many fight fans have already bought their tickets and booked their trips to Las Vegas for the April 14th weekend, and their trips are non-refundable—including me.

So where does that leave us, if in the end, there's no fight that weekend?

I, for one, will have to just make the most of that weekend and hopefully some fun-loving college co-eds will be in the celebratory mood that weekend if it's spring break for them.

So is there any good news at all this week? Yes. One very good thing happening this weekend is the highly anticipated rematch of Puerto Rican sensation Juan Manuel Lopez taking on the only fighter to ever defeat him—WBO featherweight champion Orlando Salido.

Their first match was a fight-of-the-year-worthy match with tons of action where Salido ended up stopping Lopez in the 8th round.

Some felt the referee Roberto Ramirez may have prematurely stopped the fight resulting in Juan Ma's first loss of his professional career and losing his WBO strap that night.

Other reports came out that Lopez was going through an extremely distracting divorce right in the middle of his training camp that greatly hindered his performance that night.

Lopez, prior to the first fight with Salido, was on his way to becoming the next biggest star in boxing by knocking out most of anyone standing in his way. Previous Puerto Rican fight legends such as Tito Trinidad even gave their full endorsement to Lopez showing up and promoting his fights.

Will Lopez bounce back and redeem himself against the only man to ever beat him Saturday night?

Well, that of course remains to be seen, but you can bet that this will again be an exciting fan friendly fight with lots of action and drama.

If Lopez can win the rematch convincingly in a big fashion, then he'll be right back on that same fast track to stardom that he was on right before the first Salido fight.

With all the confusion this week, especially on Tuesday, one thing is for sure. We will definitely get a lot of answers Saturday night in Puerto Rico.

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