De La Hoya Slams The IBF For Stripping Crawford

In the latest boxing news, Oscar De La Hoya has hit back at the IBF over their decision to strip Terence Crawford of his welterweight belt.

Bud achieved history by becoming the first undisputed welterweight champion of the four-belt era by stopping Errol Spence Jr. in the ninth round, and as a consequence, he became undisputed in a second weight class following his feats at 140.

Although that may have been the case, the two fighters were contractually obliged to face each other in a rematch. Spence activated the rematch clause with questions marks remaining over the weight class.

The ‘Truth’ favoured a rematch at 154, while Crawford made it clear that it would be at 147 unless either fighter informed each other that they could not make the weight.

And given that there were so many contractual issues, Crawford was not in a postion to defend his titles against his IBF mandatory Jaron Ennis.

But rather than take that into regard, the IBF stripped Crawford and made Ennis the full champion. That did not go down well with De La Hoya, who had a few choice words to say about the matter.

“What a pathetic decision from the IBF. Terence Crawford is the Ring Magazine champion and recognized as the “MAN” Bunch of BULLS. The only ratings that matter. Ring Magazine no corruption, no politics and no bulls,” De La Hoya stated 

The decision will have an impact on the Spence vs. Crawford rematch in that the ‘Truth’ will no longer be able to fight for undisputed at 147. And given that a rematch at 154 holds no belts, there is no guarantee that the fight gets made.

After all, with no legacy on the line by way of belts, it is a question of what motivation does either fighter have to get back in the ring. As for Ennis’ camp, they did not appear downbeat over what Crawford may have been feeling.

“I already knew about that from the get-go, but I was waiting for them to put it out to know for sure. If they want to fight for the title, they got to get in the ring now, or they’re going to move up. I don’t know what they’re going to do. But if everybody told me they want to fight for a world title. Now is the time.

“The logical next step is to defend the title. So whoever is next in line, and once we do that, we’re going to move on down and try to get the WBC, try to get the WBA, and try to move on down and clean the division out. It’s great because that’s what we wanted to do, but we wanted to fight for it, though. We didn’t want to have someone give it to us, but we got to take it the way we can get it since nobody wanted to fight us for it. So we had to take it,” Derek Ennis