Oscar De La Hoya has given his right-hand man the full authority to do everything possible to sign up Manny Pacquiao for his farewell fight on Dec. 6.
“A fight with Oscar can happen,” Golden Boy Promotions (GBP) Chief Executive Officer Richard Schaefer told Dan Rafael of ESPN.com. “Oscar gave me clear instructions to make the fight with Pacquiao, not to kill the fight.”
Schaefer and Top Rank head Bob Arum, who promotes the Filipino star, are scheduled to meet this Wednesday (Thursday in Manila) to see whether a deal can be forged between the rival promotional outfits.
“I am going to meet with him and if we can work out a deal that is acceptable to Bob, Manny and to us, then we will get the fight done. Bob and me have a pretty good track record of making big fights. I will sit down with Bob on Wednesday (in Los Angeles) and I think we will know in a half-hour if we have a deal or not.”
“There are issues we need to talk about. There are some deal points which need to be discussed such as the split of the revenues, the weight. I think the gloves, maybe.”
Schaefer said De La Hoya, who turns 36 in February, was pained by remarks made by Pacquiao trainer Freddie Roach that he can no longer pull the trigger and that the Golden Boy wants to teach Roach and Pacquiao a lesson for being disrespectful.
Pacquiao also earned the ire of De La Hoya in 2006 when he decided to retain Arum as his promoter despite the fact that Pacquiao had also signed a pact with GBP.
Despite their differences, both Top Rank and GBP have co-promoted several cards including Pacquiao?s bouts with Marco Antonio Barrera (in October last year) and Juan Manuel Marquez (last March).
“Oscar will show them how he can pull the trigger,” Schaefer, who just returned from a 12-day European vacation, said.
Arum had already met with Pacquiao early this week in Las Vegas and was told that a De La Hoya fight is tops in the boxer?s priority list.
The MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas has been booked to stage De La Hoya?s swan song with pay-per-view sales expected to set new records owing to the strong following of the two protagonists.
