Richard Schaefer Talks Danny Garcia-Lucas Matthysse Fight

UPDATE: Not 15 minutes after I posted this story, I got an email from Golden Boy, announcing a Thursday 3 PM conference call touting a “major fight announcement that no media member will want to miss.” Care to place a bet on what fight that will be?

Richard Schaefer told TSS he didn’t want to divulge much on some of the fights he’s working on making, what with the “strange environment” in the boxing deal-making sphere these days.

“There are too many people trying to eff up what I do, so it’s better if I get them done before they’re announced before they get effed up,” he said, chuckling during a Wednesday phoner.

The Golden Boy day-to-day boss was referencing, partially, the Guillermo Rigondeaux-HBO-Top Rank situation, which I do suppose could be under the heading “strange,” though this being boxing, perhaps it’s better to label that contremps “a variation of the usual strange.” That involves Arum coming out saying that the HBO crew seems uninterested in Rigo’s next scrap, because, he says, they aren’t enthralled with the manner in which he plys his craft ie with technical brilliance but with an absence of risk-taking.

When touching on that, Schaefer found himself being surprised that he was on the same side with Arum, a most bitter rival who he’s portrayed as being a skilled dictator at the tail-end of a lengthy reign. “Hopefully HBO will live up to their obligation to Rigondeaux,” Scheafer said. “I agree with Arum, HBO pushed for the Rigo fight with Donaire, and they should be behind his next fight, because he won.”

Schaefer just returned from another trip, from the UK. He could place Amir Khan’s next fight there, or perhaps Dubai; it looks like maybe he’s making that location his version of Arum’s Macau, ie the place to place fights where money is still flowing freely, a place that is still in many ways an emerging market seeking to cement itself as a world-class resort destination. He hopes, he says, to lock down all elements of a deal that puts 140 pound champ Danny Garcia of Philly in against the Argentine marauder Lucas Matthysse. That would likely fall on the Sept. 14 Mayweather-Canelo undercard, and the promoter has fingers crossed he gets it signed and sealed by Friday. He’s traveling again on Saturday, and wants to finalize the much-talked-about scrap. If it doesn’t get finished, he admitted, he will revert to a mode of skepticism that it can be made in a timely fashion. Who or what the hold up could be, he didn’t specify. Rumor generators, re-start your engines…

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