Following the latest collapse of a fight between Vergil Ortiz and Eimantas Stanionis, Stanionis goes in depth with Fight Hype on why he’s pissed off with Golden Boy for putting him through hell after Ortiz had to withdraw, refusing to compensate him for his training expenses and even making it almost impossible to change travel arrangements for him and his team once it was clear the fight was off. Here are some excerpts of what he had to say.
Stanionis on being upset with Golden Boy Promotions
“I am very mad at Golden Boy, you know, because they treated us very terrible,” Stanionis said. “They didn’t say what, when, how, when — basically let’s start from the scratch. From Wednesday we are flying from LAX, from Los Angeles airport to San Antonio and on the same flight we had people from Golden Boy, Golden Boy representatives. So they told us the same day we was supposed to do face off at Alamodome at 6 p.m., and they say ‘it’s canceled because Vergil got sick.’
“And we asked if the fight is off, they say ‘no, no, everything is good.’ So I was thinking he’s making weight, you know, and he doesn’t want to change his training schedule. So we were flying, nobody said nothing. In the evening I started my weight-cutting process, dehydration process, like we all do. It’s a normal thing for us fighters. And then I went to sleep. I sleep really terrible because when you don’t drink no water you just in this kind of state, you don’t feel good.
“So in the morning usually I go for a walk, just drink espresso or something. So me and my team went for a walk and my manager called and he asked me if I can come back to the hotel. I said I will come in like an hour, hour-and-a-half. And he said ‘the fight might be off.’ I was like ‘oh, what’s going on?’ I was thinking he couldn’t make weight so probably we will negotiate some different weight, like 150 or 152, I don’t know.
“I came to the hotel and we sat down and basically they told me fight is off. I said ‘maybe they will find some replacement’ or something, just to give me a fight, or after a week or two on another show. And they said ‘no.’
“So I asked also about compensation. I said ‘I spent a lot of money on the training camp.’ And they just ignore the fact. Everybody just left me and my team like that, they didn’t care. And the same day they were speaking about Vergil, his manager went on the Twitter like a few hours later and posted like ‘150, 154, easy work’. I think, first of all, he should take care of his fighter, see how his health is. Don’t think about what the next thing is.
“To be honest, I don’t really know what’s the truth, what happened. If he fainted on Wednesday I just wish him a speedy recovery, you know. It’s possible because we make weight and we put our bodies through hell sometimes.
“I’m just basically mad that they knew on Wednesday that — if they say on Wednesday morning he collapsed, you know, fainted, and they didn’t inform me and I had to go through all this cutting weight process and nobody informed me. So I’m mad. There was no apology, no sorry. Everything talking about him and Ennis. I was working in silence and I was just laughing — they are speaking in the future (like) I’m not existing.
“I asked ASAP to change my flight tickets and they said ‘oh, we don’t have a budget to change the flight tickets, we can change it tomorrow’…also I got my coach from Lithuania to fly into LA. I put him in hotel room and then we went to San Antonio and I asked to change his flights ASAP also, from Los Angeles to Lithuania because I was thinking I need to deal with my team first because nobody help me. I was doing all these things on my own.
“We was writing Golden Boy all the letters and they were responding like every four hours and I was just texting and they say ‘tomorrow we will do this.’ Tomorrow comes, nobody is texting me. So I send reminder, nobody answers (until) like two, three hours later…to change the tickets takes like five minutes, I don’t understand. Because they bought the (flight) tickets from the company so that’s the thing, that I can’t change them, because if I could do this I would do this ASAP, it’s not a big deal.
“I don’t respect Golden Boy, that’s for sure. I respect Vergil but I don’t respect Golden Boy. How they deal with us, there is no respect. It’s the worst organization, ever. So I don’t want to have any (involvement) and I want to say to the young fighters don’t sign with Golden Boy because if you lose, they’ll drop you like ASAP. It’s my opinion.”