Oscar De La Hoya’s “Clap Back Thursday” is normally one of boxing’s more tongue-in-cheek online segments, but the former pound-for-pound star was in no mood for humour in its latest edition.
The 52-year-old cut a frustrated figure as he addressed the increasingly fractious relationship between the WBC and Terence Crawford — a dispute now in urgent need of repair after Crawford was stripped of his super-middleweight title for what WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman said was unpaid sanctioning fees.
Crawford fired back with an unfiltered response on Instagram, prompting De La Hoya to publicly challenge the three-weight undisputed champion’s stance and throw his support behind the sanctioning body. What followed was a fiery, expletive-laden monologue that set the tone immediately.
“I won’t make you laugh because today I’m pretty f*****g pissed off.
“Terence Crawford, he told the WBC to basically go f*** themselves yesterday and is refusing to pay sanctioning fees to them for his $50 million fight against Canelo. Did he forget where he came from or how he got there? How do you think you rose to that level? Through the ranking system? You get positioned to make that kind of money.
“You’ve been paying sanctioning fees for a long time in the past. There’s nothing new here. There’s nothing groundbreaking.”
Now a leading promoter, De La Hoya went further, accusing Crawford of acting as a mouthpiece for TKO — who, alongside Sela, recently formed Zuffa Boxing, the new promotional outfit fronted by Dana White and Turki Alalshikh, who owns The Ring magazine.
“It sounds like you’re reading a script or something. It looks like that monopoly money really got to your head. This is not the way champions behave. There is an agenda with TKO. They want to create one belt, one entity to control the entire sport, but it’s sad that they made you the mouthpiece? You of all people? I thought you had integrity. I thought you had respect for boxing and the sport.”
De La Hoya then drew a line in the sand, explaining where some sanctioning fees are spent — including housing former fighters and paying hospital bills — before turning his attention back to Crawford.
“So just because you made it, Crawford, and you made $50 million, you don’t want to pay that fee ever again? That is wrong. There’s an agenda here by the TKO group, and I’m going to do everything in my power to do whatever I can to protect boxing because this is a sport that gave me everything.”
Zuffa Boxing will stage 12 boxing events in 2026 beginning in January.
