Lamont Roach Sr spent some time talking to Fight Hype about the news surrounding his son losing out on a lucrative rematch with Gervonta Davis, who will instead be pursuing an event where he’ll face Jake Paul. Roach Sr says the news wasn’t what they were looking forward to as they’ve been preparing for the sequel for some time now, but that they’ll just have to adjust and find a new path going forward.
“We got the news just like everybody else,” Roach Sr said. “It was very surprising to see that announcement
given that we thought that we should’ve had the fight for him next but that’s the business of boxing, stuff like that, take place and you got to see what you’re going to do going forward with it. It’s unusual because we had an agreement, so we’ll see how that plays out though ‘cause we were preparing for that bout for months. Got postponed a couple of times but to see it go somewhere else, it’s not good for the sport.
“A lot of people say ‘oh money this, money that’ but you got to do business the right way. You got guys on that other side, especially fighters that take time out of their life, train, get their coaches, sparring partners, go different places, travel, invest a lot of time in their career and it’s a lot. So when they get back, they get news like that, it does not receive well. But we solid, we gonna stand 10 toes down and we’re going to see what’s next for us.
“Business is business, man. You can’t just break business and go somewhere else. That’s not setting a good precedent in the sport of boxing, it’s not setting a bar on how you operate, how you do business. That means anybody got a fight right now they can just say ‘hey, I’m going to get more money to take another fight’ and just call it off. Can’t do that. You got stuff put in place so things like that shouldn’t happen. We shouldn’t give people a pass because of who they are, how much money they make…when you got obligations, you honor those obligations.”
During a recent online exchange between Roach Jr and Davis, Davis posted that Roach was attempting to pursue a lawsuit against him, which is something Roach Sr appears to also allude to in this interview when he mentioned ‘consequences’ behind Davis’ actions. We’ll have to wait and see how far that all actually goes, however.
