By Bill "Two Scoops" Emes

Golden Boy Promotions President Oscar De La Hoya has reacted to the negative press from the writers, and the negative comments from the fans, with respect to the Showtime televised championship tripleheader on August 9th from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.

Boxing pundits, and most of the fans, showered negativity on the main event which features WBC/WBA junior welterweight champion Danny Garcia defending his titles against lightweight contender Rod Salka (19-3, 3KOs), who is not ranked at junior welterweight and his biggest win came against untested Cuban prospect Alexei Collado.

There were similar remarks about the co-featured fight between IBF champion Lamont Peterson and Puerto Rican contender Edgar Santana (29-4, 20KOs). But the last time Santana pulled off a significant win was a 2008 decision (where Santana was nearly KO'd in the eight) over Josesito Lopez. He was inactive for three years due to legal issues. And since coming back in 2011, Santana has not beaten any opponents close to Peterson's level.

De La Hoya acknowledges the two fights are not pretty on paper, but he believes the underdogs will create exciting contests which are going to replicate his recent tripleheader last month in Carson.

 

"The only way that you can respond to [to the negative reaction] is by the fighters performing in the ring. Look - we can tell a story, we can try to convince the world of this and that, but what history shows is that the underdog is always alive, the underdog always has that shot. The underdog came out on top on a lot of occasions - like Danny Garcia with Lucas Matthysse. Everybody thought Lucas Matthysse would beat him easy. Danny was the underdog and look at what he did. Look at Marcos Maidana with Adrien Broner. Broner thought it was going to be a walk in the park and look at what Maidana did," De La Hoya told BoxingScene.com.

"You can never count out an underdog in America. This card is a card where people are going to see it on paper [and criticize it], but you watch I think we are going to get a lot of surprises on August 9th."

"We are all about going back to the roots of boxing, going back to making the best fights happen. We had a tremendous night at the Home Depot Center. Where, again, people didn't expect Kamegai to give such a great performance, people didn't expect Soto Karass to give another spectacular performance against Devon Alexander. He showed that heart, that fighting spirit that he wants to be world champion again. That's what its all about. What we got were entertaining fights, what we got were fights where nobody expected would be entertaining fights."