Promoters settle their feud

The rival boxing promoters engaged in the sport’s cold war declared a truce Friday, and because of it, Oscar De La Hoya will finally get back his 1992 Olympic gold medal.

De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions and Bob Arum’s Top Rank Inc. announced they have settled all of their previous legal disputes, including a heated civil court battle over the promotional rights to super-featherweight Manny Pacquiao of the Philippines.

The promoters said Pacquiao, considered one of the world’s best pound-for-pound fighters, will return to the ring Oct. 6 for a co-promoted rematch against Marco Antonio Barrera, a Golden Boy fighter whom Pacquiao (44-3-2) defeated by an 11th-round technical knockout in 2003. The rematch will be fought at Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas.

The promoters declined to reveal the settlement’s financial terms.

“The biggest winner in this is the fans,” Golden Boy Chief Executive Richard Schaefer said. “The biggest and best fights in boxing can now happen.”

Schaefer and Arum said joint promotions such as World Boxing Council super-featherweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez fighting Pacquiao next, and a welterweight title fight between Top Rank’s champion Miguel Cotto and Golden Boy’s Shane Mosley are on the horizon.

It wasn’t stipulated in two weeks of settlement talks mediated by a retired judge, but Arum said the new era of goodwill has prompted him to give back the gold medal he received from De La Hoya after the young boxer from East Los Angeles signed a promotional deal with Arum.

Arum said he will present the medal to De La Hoya at an August event in Las Vegas, where the Pacquiao-Barrera fight will, of course, be promoted.

“It’ll be a real nice ceremony, and I’ll present Oscar his medal,” Arum said in a telephone interview.

“It was always my intention to give him the medal back when he retired, but I know he’s talked recently of getting it back sooner, and I’ll be happy to do that.

“Once the mediator broke our logjam [over Pacquiao], the animosity just melted away. It had a cathartic effect, where you rid yourself of any bad feelings you’ve harbored for years.”

De La Hoya split from Arum after last year’s fight against Ricardo Mayorga, and proceeded to promote the richest fight in boxing history last month when he lost by split decision to Floyd Mayweather Jr. He and Schaefer said before the Mayweather fight that Arum had deprived De La Hoya of millions, and they criticized the veteran promoter for keeping the medal -- insisting their stable of fighters would not meet anyone under Arum’s control.

Arum promoted a Pacquiao fight in April but claimed De La Hoya had tried to recruit the fighter unfairly by giving him a suitcase full of cash at a meeting last year in Beverly Hills.

While crediting the mediation efforts of the retired judge, Daniel Weinstein, De La Hoya and Arum had lunch Wednesday in Las Vegas and clinched the deal.

“Both sides realized if there was a formula to work out, it’d be better to do that than continue litigation,” Schaefer said. “There are too many great fights to be made. Because of the feud, certain fights weren’t going to happen, and that’s not fair to the fighters.”

--

lance.pugmire@latimes.com