Oscar-Arum bad blood continues

The bad blood is once again boiling in the ongoing feud between rival boxing promoters Bob Arum and Oscar De La Hoya.

Top Rank’s Arum is incensed at a blog written by Golden Boy’s De La Hoya for the Golden Boy-owned Ringtv.com website, which also appeared on Yahoo! Sports on Friday. In his blog, in which he chose Miguel Cotto to defeat Manny Pacquiao in their Nov. 14 fight at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, De La Hoya wrote that Arum arranged for a larger-than-normal ring to favor the quicker Pacquiao.

De La Hoya, who once gave Pacquiao a suitcase filled with cash in an attempt to sign him to a promotional deal in 2007, wrote on his blog, “I believe that’s the reason (promoter) Bob Arum arranged to have a big ring, to give Pacquiao an advantage. Arum promotes both fighters but, obviously, it benefits him more if Pacquiao wins so they’re going to favor him.”

Arum didn’t take kindly to De La Hoya’s comments and pointed out that the claim about an oversized ring was incorrect.

“Is that little (expletive) crazy?” Arum asked. “Who writes this (expletive) for him? I’m absolutely outraged. He can pick whoever he wants to pick to win the fight and he can say whatever he wants to say about me, but to write that I arranged to have the ring made bigger to favor anyone is a complete (expletive) lie and is just not true. For as long as I can remember, the rings in Nevada have been 20 feet by 20 feet and I didn’t do (an expletive) thing about changing it.”

Keith Kizer, the executive director of the Nevada Athletic Commission, confirmed that Arum is correct. He said there has not been a ring other than the 20 x 20 standard version used in Nevada since 2005, when The Tournament of Contenders requested a smaller ring be used for the final episode of the first season of the reality series, “The Contender.”

“Mr. Arum absolutely did not ask for a different ring size,” Kizer said. “We haven’t been asked that in a long time. As you know, our standard ring is 20-by-20 and no fighter, no promoter, nobody, has asked for a different size in quite some time. The size of the ring on Nov. 14 will be 20-by-20, like it always is.”

De La Hoya was not in his office Friday and could not immediately be reached for comment.

Source: yahoo.com