Report- De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions Flirting With Triller

The “musical chairs” of Boxing promotions and new t.v./streaming partners is ongoing, and Oscar De La Hoya’s  Golden Boy Promotions may be the next one to switch things up.

A report out Friday night from the Athletic’s Mike Coppinger says that the Hall of Fame fighter is looking to shop his diminished stable of fighters to another outlet besides DAZN,

.@OscarDeLaHoya tells me he’s exploring a deal with Triller that would see the entire Golden Boy stable, led by Ryan Garcia, leave DAZN. Deal with DAZN expires end of year. All the details:https://t.co/DmJqTjvC6R

— Mike Coppinger (@MikeCoppinger) May 8, 2021

“From my personal experience with Triller and watching the numbers they have put up in just their two shows, I’ve been extremely impressed,” De La Hoya said to Coppinger. “We are engaged in conversations with executives at Triller and will see where they land.”

De La Hoya appeared on the second Triller “Fight Club” show last month featuring Jake Paul and Ben Askren in the main event as a commentator and had previously announced that he was returning to the ring himself, also on Triller in July.

De La Hoya is referring to the supposed over one million PPV buys for the Paul-Askren card. However, that number has yet to be verified by anyone, independently. And, Triller has already backed off doing a PPV that they had announced for June 5th with Undisputed Lightweight Champ Teofimo Lopez and is looking to reschedule. That’s a fight that they bid $6 million for earlier this year and they got spooked by Floyd Mayweather’s announced PPV exhibition on Showtie with Youtuber Logan Paul the next night,

As we wrote previously, the former six division world champ has made it no secret that he has been back training to fight again legitimately, since last Summer.

Still, the fact that the now 48 year old De La Hoya made the announcement with Triller begged the question, whether it will be an actual bout against a legitimate, younger opponent or will it be similar to the Mike Tyson-Roy Jones “exhibition” that Triller staged last November in Los Angeles?

And now, there has been some speculation that De La Hoya’s fight will not happen, at least in early July.

More importantly for Golden Boy, their deal announced in 2018 with DAZN is ending. And, even though it was trumpeted by De La Hoya and DAZN based on the signing of a staggering 11 fight, $365 deal with Canelo Alvarez, that began to crumble fairly quickly.

That’s when the Oscar-Canelo relationship soured just a year later due to De La Hoya and his matchmaker, Robert Garcia, screwing up a mandatory title defense for Alvarez’s IBF Middleweight title in the Summer of 2019. And, that got Canelo stripped of a portion of his Undisputed 160 lb. title he had won off Gennadiy Golovkin enraging him.

Alvarez eventually sued to separate from De La Hoya and won his freedom in a settlement to just walk away late last year.

The other biggest named fighter De La Hoya has is, unbeaten Lightweight contender, Ryan Garcia, who scored the biggest win of his career in early January, when he knocked out Luke Campbell. However, Garcia has been a problem for Golden Boy with previous shows, his opponents and money on two previous 2019 and 2020 fight cards.

And, Garcia also just nixed his July Golden Boy main event fight with fellow contender Javier Fortuna citing “mental well being.” There’s no word on when he might fight again this year.

Without Canelo and with Garcia in limbo (for now) unbeaten Welterweight Vergil Oritz is his biggest name to market and he’ll be in action later this year. Golden Boy also has WBO #1 Middleweight Jaime Munguia (shown top) to help headline in the near term, including next month.

As for their DAZN relationship, the service has obviously expanded world-wide and most prominently, into Europe. And, it appears that Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing is about to jump from their partner of over 10 years, Sky Sports in the U.K., to do a multi-year deal with DAZN, exclusively.

Matchroom already has a deal with DAZN in the U.S., and the Canelo-Saunders fight for Saturday night.

It’s also been reported that Premier Boxing Champions will end their multi-year, relationship with Fox Sports in the U.S. by the end of the year at the latest. It could be sooner and they will reportedly jump to CBS and CBS Sports Network, in addition to their fights on Showtime Networks.

So, is it Triller? Is it a re-up with DAZN?

How valuable is Golden Boy without Canelo and with Garcia being a difficult, uncertain talent to headline for them?

Answers will be coming soon.