Larry Merchant’s quick reaction to Richard Schaefer leaving Golden Boy

Larry Merchant’s quick reaction to Richard Schaefer leaving Golden Boy

Moments after the news broke that Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer would be leaving the company, I spoke with Hall of Fame boxing analyst Larry Merchant briefly about his thoughts on the development and what impact it will have on the sport moving forward. Here are Larry’s thoughts:

“Schaefer did a good job in helping to build Golden Boy virtually from scratch into one of the two major promotion companies,” Merchant said in a phone interview.

“His expertise was not boxing but business and he must have done something right. There has obviously been a split between him and Oscar De La Hoya and it has been made public. It seemed inevitable that some kind of split was going to happen and the next question is does Schaefer stay in the boxing business, does he make a move sideways to some other company Who will step in to help Oscar run Golden Boy? Those are the other shoes that have to drop.”

When asked whether or not he expects the Cold War to be over quickly or whether or not it’ll be slower moving, here is what Merchant had to say:

“Inevitably, it is going to be slower moving. Maybe there is an icebreaker. The reality is that both Golden Boy and Top Rank are aligned with the top pay channels, HBO and Showtime, and how do they bridge that particular gap if you’re providing the product for one of the networks, what happens if you make a match? Who gets it, how does all that work out? It’s a sign that, given what De La Hoya has been saying recently about trying to get into business with Top Rank if it is something that helps both companies as well as fight fans, let’s be hopeful. We’ll believe it when we see it.”

Another interesting point is that both Golden Boy and Top Rank have rival beer sponsors, how do they figure out who gets the right to sponsor which fights when they are made? While this is obviously a great break in the feud between the two companies, there is much more to be ironed out before we start seeing the marquee matchups we’ve all been asking for.

-Mark E. Ortega / @MarkEOrtega

-Managing editor at www.BehindTheGloves.com