Sky made a big mistake - De La Hoya
Oscar De La Hoya has burned Amir Khan's bridges with Sky by launching an ill-advised attack on Britain's leading boxing broadcaster.
Khan fell out with Sky and jumped ship to Primetime TV after they decided Saturday's WBA light-welterweight title defence against Paul McCloskey did not merit being on Sky Box Office. Sky were proved correct in their call as Khan won with an unfulfilling points triumph after McCloskey suffered an accidental cut in the sixth round.
Khan's promoter De La Hoya was in Manchester trying to carry out a charm offensive in fight week but succeeded only in creating more fires than he put out. "Amir is still the WBA champion of the world," said the former six-weight world champion.
He added: "When you have 17,000 people in this arena and it is televised on Primetime, and with the bright future of Amir Khan and the fights he's going to have in the future, I believe Sky made a big mistake.
"We (Golden Boy Promotions) have an extensive library of fights, more than 100 fighters in our stable and most of them are world champions.
"We're going to talk (with Primetime). And we're going to talk soon. I'm going to have my people here in a few weeks to sit down and work something out because they've stuck behind Amir Khan and we appreciate that.
"We know you (Primetime) want to be a player in the boxing world. Well, you have the biggest promoter in the world today right now telling you we're going to work together and that's the bottom line."
Post-fight talk was dominated by McCloskey's demands for a rematch and Khan's promotional team putting out public relations fires but the man himself was happy just to focus on his next assignment, when he bids to add Timothy Bradley's WBC and WBO titles to his own WBA belt.
The 24-year-old said: "My promotional team looks after all that so Oscar is going to go back to America and see what we can do for the unification fight.
"Bradley is a good fighter but that's just going to push me and motivate me. These big fights in the future only make you a better fighter."
Date published :
18 Apr 2011 - 07:00:16
