Oscar De La Hoya may be well on his way to putting the Canelo Alvarez fiasco behind him, but one thing he says he still can’t wrap his head around is that his former ace client supposedly left him for less money.  

The head of Golden Boy Promotions and former six-division world champion was recently asked on The 3 Knockdown Rule podcast if he could ever get over losing Alvarez, the WBC, WBO, WBA super middleweight champion and the biggest boxing star in North America. After years of cozy co-existence, their relationship had finally reached an unsalvageable level.  

“I can get over it,” De La Hoya said. It’s business. Business is business. The only thing that kind of like disturbs me a bit is that we had everything teed up for him. He was making more money with us than what he is now, with a different promoter. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Alvarez (56-1-2, 38 KOs) and De La Hoya agreed to part ways last year, after Alvarez sued his longtime promoter ­– and broadcaster DAZN – for breach of contract. One of the central tenets of Alvarez’s lawsuit was that he was not being paid what he was owed contractually by Golden Boy/DAZN. Alvarez, a free agent, is now working on a fight-to-fight-basis with Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn, who works exclusively with DAZN.

Eric Gomez, the president of Golden Boy, was also on hand with De La Hoya during The 3 Knockdown Rule. Addressing concerns that Golden Boy had one foot out the door, on the heels of losing their cash cow, Gomez pointed to the company’s track record of developing superstars.

“We’ve been counted out before,” said Gomez. “People forget. Canelo just didn’t become a big star the way that he did. [Floyd] Mayweather didn’t become a big star [on his own]. There’s a formula, too, there’s a way, there’s a process. We lived it. We built it. So there’s a way and there’s a formula and there’s a blueprint. People forget that. We have the blueprint.

Bad blood continues to simmer between De La Hoya and Alvarez. Recently, De La Hoya critiqued Alvarez’s boxing abilities on social media and threatened to knock him out in a separate video. Alvarez fired back with an expletive and a series of emojis referencing De La Hoya’s infamous sex scandal.

De La Hoya, 48, is tentatively scheduled to return to the ring for the first time in 13 years on Sept. 11 in an exhibition fight against UFC champion Vitor Belfort on Triller.