Oscar De La Hoya has broken his silence on his absence from the press conference following his fighter, Ryan Garcia, losing to Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis.
Garcia was put down in the second round by Davis, and fought tentatively until the seventh when he was hit with a crisp body shot. He couldn’t make the count, and ‘Tank’ was announced winner by TKO.
Speaking on Instagram, De La Hoya first congratulated him on his victory.
“First of all, congratulations to Gervonta Davis. You fought a hell of a fight. My hat’s off to you. You had a great game plan, beautiful body shot.
Ryan Garcia, we are proud of you. The world is proud of you. You made this fight happen. You wanted this fight and I’m sure a lot of fighters will learn from you that you’re daring to great.”
Garcia was humble in defeat and made no excuses, praising his opponent and floating a move up to 140lb. He was doing this solo in a sense, since the two men who had flanked him all fight week – De La Hoya and Bernard Hopkins – were notably MIA.
Hopkins, who partners with De La Hoya and Eric Gomez to form Golden Boy Promotions, made headlines at the weigh-in by getting into an altercation with Davis and his team.
De La Hoya went on to address the press conference and said this was the reason ‘B-Hop’ wasn’t present.
But I do want to clarify why Bernard Hopkins and I weren’t at the press conference. First of all, Bernard Hopkins was accused during the weigh in of having testosterone cream on his hands and touching Gervonta Davis, when he only wanted to help him because he was gonna fall of the stage.
So PBC, Gervonta’s promoter, banned him from everything. He couldn’t get inside the ring, he couldn’t do anything during the promotion.”
As for himself, the six-weight world champion turned promoter said he had received death threats and was advised to leave the venue.
“As for myself, my security team told me ‘boss, we gotta get the f**k out of here’ because I received death threats. You guys don’t know this, I received death threats throughout the whole week. And they just said it was simply too dangerous, so we got out of there.”
“And plus, Eric Gomez, who is my president, was right there front and centre, so there was no problems. This is all coming from these PBC minions that are just attacking Ryan, attacking Golden Boy.”
De La Hoya signed off by confirming that he and Hopkins were still riding with Garcia after the defeat, and told fans that he would be back better than ever.