Eddie Hearn puzzled by Oscar De La Hoya’s criticism of Canelo Alvarez vs. Dmitry Bivol booking: “I don’t want to sit there & watch a mismatch”

Matchroom Boxing’s Eddie Hearn has fired back at Oscar De La Hoya over recent criticism.

During an interview with MMAFighting, De La Hoya claimed Hearn put Canelo Alvarez in a lose-lose situation by booking him against Dmitry Bivol. Canelo lost the fight in a bid for the WBA Light Heavyweight Championship.

De La Hoya’s argument was that Bivol was an undefeated fighter with no name recognition, who could do damage to Canelo’s brand all for a “meaningless” fight.

Hearn fired back at De La Hoya during an appearance on The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani.

“The thing is, promoters want to make easy fights for their clients, because they want to milk as much money as possible,” Hearn told Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour. “I’m a promoter, and I do see the science in that. I’m also a fan. I also want to sit there, if I’m invested in a fight — and sometimes there is quite a lot of financial risk in a fight — I really don’t want to pay big money to see a mismatch. I don’t want to sit there and watch a mismatch. Sometimes it happens, and there’s nothing we can do about that. Not every fight is a ‘Fight of the Year’ contender.

“But why do you want to criticize a guy — of course, out of jealousy and the fact that they fell out, there’s a lot of that — but why do you want to criticize a guy for trying to be great? You’re basically saying, ‘You shouldn’t have taken that fight because it was too difficult.’ What sort of sport do we live in where we’re criticizing fighters for taking a big challenge?”

Canelo is set to have a third encounter with Gennady Golovkin on Sept. 17 for the WBA, WBC, IBF, WBO, and The Ring super middleweight titles.