By Keith Idec

Lou DiBella realizes how this might look.

DiBella is one of the most emotional promoters in boxing, prone to profane outbursts when he hears or sees something he considers unjust. As the co-promoter of the Mikey Garcia-Adrien Broner card, though, the Harvard-educated former HBO Sports executive believes Top Rank president Todd duBoef overreacted during a conference call Monday to Mikey Garcia discussing potential fights against Top Rank fighters Vasyl Lomachenko and Terence Crawford (https://www.boxingscene.com/top-ranks-duboef-rips-mikey-garcia-open-garcia-lomachenko--119049).

“I don’t promote Mikey Garcia, but I’ve been involved in his last three fights and I just promoted this show in Brooklyn,” DiBella told BoxingScene.com. “I read these quotes from Todd and I’m perplexed because what is he so upset about? Take a deep breath and chill out.

“I’m an emotional guy and I can be a little bit nuts, so I’m not one to criticize someone for losing their sh*t. But I don’t even get this. I was there through the whole promotion, I was there through the the press conference afterward and everything, and honestly, Top Rank never even came up.”

DiBella pointed out Garcia (37-0, 30 KOs) merely answered questions that were asked by reporters. He didn’t “call out” Lomachenko (8-1, 6 KOs) or Crawford (31-0, 22 KOs).

“Mikey wasn’t looking past Broner, but after the fight people were asking him questions [about Lomachenko and Crawford],” DiBella said. “And people are gonna talk about that stuff because Mikey is on the pound-for-pound list, Lomachenko is on the pound-for-pound list, Crawford is on the pound-for-pound list. But Mikey never mentioned these guys.

“In fact, when he was questioned, he specifically wouldn’t even talk about it. People were trying to get him to talk about those guys and for the most part Mikey was trying to avoid those conversations because there are politics involved and there are relationships involved. He wasn’t looking to make a point to call out anybody, particularly Top Rank fighters.”

Before and after he beat Broner by unanimous decision in their 12-round main event at Barclays Center, Garcia prefaced most of his answers to questions about boxing Lomachenko at 135 pounds and Crawford at 140 pounds by stating that his contentious relationship with Top Rank could complicate making either of those fights.

Bob Arum’s company promoted Garcia for the first 10 years of his career, but the undefeated three-division champion reached a financial agreement with Top Rank to terminate their promotional partnership in May 2016. The business battle Garcia initiated caused him to spend 2½ years out of the ring.

That shouldn’t stop him, according to DiBella, from simply responding to questions about facing fighters Top Rank promotes.

“Everybody needs to relax,” DiBella said. “People are gonna talk about matchups that can happen, that won’t happen, that will happen. People are gonna talk about fights that they think are potentially good fights. I think Todd had a misconception of what happened. I think people are talking about certain fights and I don’t think that his criticism of Mikey or anybody around Mikey calling out these guys is accurate. It’s just not accurate, and it didn’t happen the other night.

“Every single time he was asked, he said, ‘I really don’t wanna talk about [Lomachenko and Crawford]. I’m interested in fighting the best guys.’ I thought his answers were almost perfect. He didn’t take any pokes at Top Rank, he didn’t take any pokes at anybody. He just acknowledged that it’s business and if things can happen, they’ll happen, and if things can’t happen, they won’t happen. He literally went way out of his way not to do what Todd was going nuts about, accusing him of doing. And I think if Todd saw a tape of the press conference, he would see that.”

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.