Oscar De La Hoya is a promoter. Promoters say things to get you to watch their fights, and they spin things to make the results look better than they are. This is standard practice. But Oscar always seems to be a little more outlandish than most, and another example of this came when he was asked about the recent buyrate for the Canelo Alvarez vs. Liam Smith PPV.
The show only drew a little under 300k buys, which is very low for a guy that's seen as one of the biggest draws in the sport. Here's Oscar's overly positive assessment of the buyrate (via ESPN):
"We're going to wind up doing close to 300,000 homes, which is great when you combine that with almost 52,000 fans we had in the crowd," De La Hoya said. "We're very happy, extremely happy with the numbers."
...
"Obviously, nobody had ever heard of Liam Smith, and when you have to try and sell a pay-per-view fight with somebody that nobody has ever heard of, you have a tough job ahead of you," De La Hoya said. "We were able to attract the fans who love boxing, and they were treated to a special fight. When it was all said and done it was a terrific fight, a lot of action."
Very interesting. Especially the part about Smith being "somebody that nobody has ever heard of". Back in July while promoting the fight, Oscar seemed to believe that a lot of people knew who Smith was:
"Liam Smith is the most popular fighter right now in the UK."
Yes, he actually said that. I guess as a promoter, you CAN have it both ways!
No matter what, under 300k is a very disappointing number for Alvarez. He also injured his hand in the bout, and isn't expected to return until 2017. There are rumblings he'll actually take a fight at 160 this time, to eventually prepare for a showdown with Gennady Golovkin down the road. But don't hold your breath.