By Jeff Sorby: Isaac ‘Pitbull’ Cruz revealed last Saturday night that there never were direct contact negotiations between the promoters for Ryan Garcia and his promoters for a fight in April.
‘Pitbull Cruz, 23, was asked about what happened with the negotiations last Saturday when he was attending Keith Thurman’s comeback fight against Mario Barrios at the Michelob Ultra Arena in Las Vegas.
On Friday, Ryan Garcia’s next fight was announced for April 9th against little-known 33-year-old fringe lightweight contender Emmanuel Tagoe at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas.
Tagoe isn’t a household name in the U.S, and he’s NOT the fighter that American boxing fans wanted to see Ryan fight next. They wanted him to take on Pitbull Cruz, especially given the way Ryan talked up the fight between them.
The highly ranked lightweight contender ‘Pitbull’ Cruz (22-2-1, 15 KOs) says the only offer that was made from Ryan’s management came through social media. In other words, there was never any serious intent on Team Ryan Garcia’s part in putting a fight together with the tough ‘Pitbull’ Cruz.
Interestingly, Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar Dela Hoya claimed last January that Isaac Cruz’s team had turned down a “lucrative” offer for a fight.
The question is if De La Hoya NEVER gave an offer to Pitbull Cruz’s team for a fight against Ryan Garcia, why did Oscar say that he did?
Was this a move to get the boxing fans to back off so that he could turn around and match King Ry against the soft opponent Emmanuel Tagoe instead?
“It is very unfortunate @IsaacPitbull98 team turned down a very lucrative offer, more than he made with Tank. @RyanGarcia @GoldenBoyBoxing,” said Oscar De La Hoya on Twitter.
“There was never direct contact between them [Ryan Garcia’s promoters] and Manny Pacquiao Promotions or my team, so it was simply something that didn’t happen,” said Isaac ‘Pitbull’ Cruz to Fighthype in revealing that NO negotiations ever took place with Ryan Garcia’s promoters at Golden Boy.
“The only offer that was made was through social media. There was never anything on paper factually that we could go off of,” Pitbull Cruz continued.
“Everybody saw what I did against Gervonta Davis. If anyone wants to fight me, we will sell things inside the ring. Besides that, we don’t have much to say besides what we already said about the subject.
“I don’t know what’s coming next, but I know it’s going to be a great fight and I’m going to be ready for whatever comes my way,” said Pitbull Cruz.
Moving forward, it would be better for Ryan not to talk about the top fighters because he’s gotten into a bad habit of getting fans’ hopes up for fights that fail to materialize.
De La Hoya is going to have to put the popular Instragam social media personality, Ryan Garcia, in against a top-tier level opponent sooner or later. He can’t pick & choose fringe-level fighters for his entire career without the fans giving up on him as a lost cause and abandoning his ship.
