De La Hoya-Whitaker Rematch Unlikely This Year

Pernell Whitaker went public with his plea for a rematch against Oscar De La Hoya on Thursday, taking out a full-page ad in both The Times and La Opinion to offer De La Hoya $12 million for a second fight. De La Hoya defeated Whitaker by unanimous decision in a World Boxing Council welterweight title fight last Saturday.

In reality, says Whitaker’s promoter, Dino Duva, the total offer is for $15 million-$16 million.

“We will guarantee him $12 million, plus a percentage of the pay-for-view that will bring it up to $15 million-$16 million,” Duva said. “They will get the same numbers as they did for the first fight. We are hoping that Oscar will be a man and tell [his promoter] Bob Arum to make the deal.”

Arum says that deal isn’t rich enough.

“With the pay-per-view,” Arum said, “the first fight made us $17 million-$18 million.

“But I have only admiration for what they did with that ad. If they can convince enough people that they saw what they didn’t see, that the fight was closer than it was, maybe a rematch is viable. I couldn’t conceive that anybody would want to see it again, but maybe I’m wrong. If they can convince people that it’s viable, why not?”

But not, said Arum, in 1997.

“Oscar’s dance card is already filled up for this year,” he said. “We’ll take a look at it in January.”

De La Hoya is scheduled to fight David Kamau at the Alamodome in San Antonio on June 14, Hector Camacho in Las Vegas in September and Patrick Charpentier of France in December, either in Tokyo or at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

“If Oscar wants to fight Kamau, that’s fine,” Duva said. “But he doesn’t have to do the Camacho fight. He doesn’t have a signed contract. That’s not a lock. He can fight Camacho later.”

Duva’s company, Main Event, purchased the ads, for about $50,000 for The Times and $3,500 for La Opinion, according to Mike Borman, a Main Event spokesman.

“We decided to run the ads when we realized Oscar was going to duck Pernell,” Borman said, “which was right after the fight.”

Included in the ads was a signed letter from Whitaker that read: “I was robbed. A true champion would not be able to accept such a victory. . . It’s time for the ‘Golden Boy’ to start acting like a man.”