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You might want to add “Pretty Boy” Floyd and Oscar De La Hoya to your Xmas card list this year.

Courtesy of Esther Lin at AllElbows.com

It appears the rumors of former UFC heavyweight champion Andrei Arlovski joining the boxing world are indeed true.

Sources close to the situation have confirmed that former UFC heavyweight champion Andrei Arlovski has indeed signed with Golden Boy Promotions and his next fight will take place inside of a boxing ring.

Arlovski had been training under legendary boxing trainer Freddie Roach for his fight last month against Fedor Emelianenko. In the weeks leading up to the fight, Roach publicly said Andrei would transition to boxing and even challenge for the heavyweight title after he took out Fedor. Obviously, beating Fedor didn’t happen, but it appears Andrei’s going to give the sweet science a shot anyways, although it remains to be seen as to whether Andrei will in fact make a run for the title.

As a fan of MMA, I’m sad to see Arlovski moving on, although it may be what makes the most sense for him at this point in his career. At the very least, we’ll finally get to see how a mixed martial artist fares against a high-level professional boxer in a boxing match.

Best of luck Andrei. We’ll be watching.

Dana White sat down with Steve Cofield yesterday and discussed a myriad of things including Dana’s thoughts on Fedor’s win over Andrei Arlovski. Apparently, Dana still hasn’t seen the fight. Here’s what he had to say.

More photos at CombatLifestyle.com

It appears “T-Shirt Gate”—what Golden Boy affectionately refers to the mess Larry Merchant created—has finally been cleared up. Sherdog’s Loretta Hunt got to the bottom of the confusion, and discovered there was some miscommunication between Mr. Merchant and Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer.

The live gate numbers are in and it looks it just enough to cover Andrei Arlovski’s purse—$1,512,750 to be exact. Of the 13,228 people that attended “Day of Reckoning,” 8,946 of them actually paid to be there. For those wondering how that compares to “Banned,” Affliction made approximately $500,000 less with 2,296 less paying customers this time around. If you look on the bright side, I suppose you can at least say it wasn’t the disaster it appeared it was going to be just days before the event.

In a video interview with Five Oz., Tom Atencio said there will be a third show, “possibly” in July or August. I guess that means the four events a year plan that Atencio spoke of just a week or two ago is already in the can, although considering the source, I’m sure we’ll hear something entirely different in a matter of days. Of course, pay-per-view numbers haven’t come in yet either, so you have imagine those results will factor into their decision making process.

Moving on, Golden Boy, specifically Chief Marketing Officer Bruce Binkow, is refuting the rumor that Oscar De La Hoya was paid $5 million to attend “Day of Reckoning.”

“It’s ridiculous [to say] that there was a $5 million dollar fee paid [for de La Hoya’s attendance]. There’s a financial commitment obviously that Affliction made, and Oscar felt an obligation through his partners at Affliction [to attend]. I don’t know how more simple it can be and why it’s any more complicated than that…The [Affliction] pay-per-view date was set long before the boxing event, and Oscar didn’t feel right about offending his commitment to our partners in Affliction.”

Personally, I think this report or rumor (whatever you want to call it) got a little out of hand. Merchant never specifically said Oscar was paid $5 million to just show up at “Day of Reckoning.” What he did say was Golden Boy was paid $5 million for Oscar to be personally involved in the promotion of the event, which includes being present at the arena, but not limited to that. Plus, this is all second hand info at best coming from a commentator. The $5 million, if correct, could have covered all of Golden Boy’s involvement with the promotion and production for all we know. Paying Tim Sylvia $800k was a stupid decision, but I don’t think we know or understand nearly enough of what’s going on behind the scenes at Affliction to judge whether or not this was a wise business decision. Nonetheless, Michael Rome has an interesting take on how it may have been.

Unfortunately, this video, care of Sherdog.com, is the only footage I’ve been able to find of the Affliction post-fight press conference thus far. If I find anything else, I’ll add it later. Nonetheless, here’s a few of the news items and quotes in the wake of Affliction’s second highly entertaining event.

–Tom Atencio announced there 13,228 attendees on hand at The Honda Center. At the present time, it is unknown how many of those were paid, and what the live gate was.

–Five Oz’s Sam Caplan is hearing talks have already begun to book Fedor vs. Barnett for their next show, which is apparently targeted for sometime this summer (May-July), that is if Affliction puts on a third show.

–Despite looking like he might never get up, Matt Lindland was seen at the official event hotel following the show signing autographs, according to Five Ounces. Sounds like he’s going to be fine.

–As mentioned in the fighter salary post, the HBO boxing commentators stated during their broadcast last night that Affliction paid Oscar De La Hoya and Golden Boy $5 million to help promote Affliction’s event, and have a presence at “Day of Reckoning.”

–Post-fight presser quotes from Fedor:

“I didn’t really think that I was really in any danger in the fight. I like to feel that I felt — not only usually, but particularly in this fight — felt comfortable and OK with where I was during the fight. I just didn’t feel that I was in any danger…I really felt comfortable, and I felt his speed. Yes, he is fast. But I didn’t really feel that I was having trouble finding range. He’s got very quick hands. He’s got great skill. But I felt after a while that I was able to counter his attack and felt comfortable in there…I just think he made a mistake. I saw on opening and my automatic reaction was to throw the right hand. For that [flying knee] of Arlovski’s, we didn’t really train or prepare for that particular move. But there are certain scenarios that we prepare for based on what’s going on in the ring. In that situation it was basically an automatic response…Honestly I haven’t seen the fight yet, but I felt based on just feeling myself in the ring, I felt it was an even fight — up until the point I knocked him out.”

–Post-fight presser quotes from Arlovski:

“I did pretty good in the first few minutes. But then I tried to do something flashy and paid for it. I have to sit down with myself and figure out why I didn’t listen to my trainers…Every single jab or right hand, I thought that I hurt him. It was very effective for me. I don’t know why I changed my tactic. One little mistake and I paid for this. All my hard work and training, I just threw it in the toilet…Tonight it was a great opportunity for me to make history. I’m really worried that somebody will beat Fedor. I just want to wish him that he’s wins against all his next opponents until our next match…He’s a great fighter (but) sooner or later someone will beat him. I’m very upset with myself that I wasn’t that person. You know he’s a human.”

–Honest comments from Fedor’s trainer, Vladimir Voronov, to SI.com’s Josh Gross.

“[Fedor's] obviously got unbelievable potential, but he had some distractions getting ready for this fight. The movie. The commercials. If Fedor wants to keep winning, and winning well, he needs to train professionally. Right now he won with his old tricks. The fact that Fedor won, don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy about. But he won this fight because of the training before this fight. The experience he had before this fight. The trainers did everything we could to get him ready. But for title fights, we can’t train the way we trained for this one.”

Sherdog post-fight interview with Andrei Arlovski after the jump.

The CSAC has released the fighter payouts for Affliction “Day of Reckoning.” Keep in mind, these figures represent the base contracted pay the fighter receives from the promotion. These figures do not include any additional bonuses or sponsorship money, which in many cases exceeds a fighter’s base pay. These numbers also do not account for taxes, insurance, and license fees.

This was an Affliction event so the card was riddled with big money winners (read: overpaid fighters). Two fighters—Fedor Emelianenko and Andrei Arlovski—stood high above the rest though. Arlovski pocketed a cool $1.5 million for getting knocked out by the heavyweight king. Fedor only received a disclosed $300,000, although, he was obviously paid substantially more in undisclosed pay. The exact number is unknown, however, I’ve seen rumors anywhere from $1.3 to $2.0 million. But, the bigger question, after watching his documentary, is what does he do with it all?

On to a much more interesting news item, or shall we say rumor considering how much the source hates MMA, during the broadcast of the Mosely-Margarito boxing match, commentators Jim Lampley and Larry Merchant had an interesting exchange regarding Golden Boy’s partnership with Affliction. According to them, Affliction paid Oscar De La Hoya and Golden Boy Promotions a $5 million fee for helping to promote the event.

“And celebrities here tonight, there’s Sugar Ray Leonard in about the fourth row, and his one time Contender colleague Sly Stallone is in the front row,” revealed Lampley. He continued, “George Lopez is here tonight, good buddy with the promoter. Mark Wahlberg comes to every major prize fight at Staples. Joe Pesci, a Goodfella, called this reporter for tickets. I didn’t have ‘em, but he got them somewhere else.

“And there’s one big name celebrity, Larry, who isn’t here tonight…”

“A celebrity who is here in bronze only,” quipped Merchant, referring to a bronze statue of Oscar De La Hoya that stands outside the Staples Center. “Oscar De La Hoya, the live version, is in nearby Anaheim, where his company got a $5 million fee from a t-shirt maker so that he would be personally involved the promotion of a mixed martial arts show.”

He added, “It would take that much, Jim, to get me to go to one of those things.”

If true, $5 million would surely explain at least one of the reasons why Golden Boy is still involved. It’s unknown at this point how much revenue Affliction brought in last night, but at this pace, it’s probably pretty safe to say Affliction will be catching up to ProElite’s staggering $55 million deficit in no time should they continue their fight operations.

Fighter salaries after the jump.

If the possibility of competing for viewers wasn’t enough for Affliction and Golden Boy come Jan. 24, then how about competing for media attention and ticket sales too? Yep, not only will the “partners” be promoting combat sports events on the same night, they’ll be doing it only 30 miles away from each other.

It was recently announced that Golden Boy would be co-promoting the Shane Mosley-Antonio Margarito fight on the same night as Affliction’s “Day of Reckoning” card, however, the boxing match was supposed to take place in Las Vegas while Affliction’s event would go down in sunny California at the Honda Center in Anaheim. That was the plan at least until yesterday when boxing promoter Bob Arum announced The Staples Center would host the big fight.

At least Affliction could bank on a solid SoCal audience choosing to stay home and attend its MMA card at the Honda Center in Anaheim. Not so quick. Bob Arum just announced that boxing has dealt Affliction another crushing blow by putting the big boxing card just up the road at The Staples Center.

Ouch, that’s gotta sting a little, huh, Affliction?

One of two things must be going on here. Either no partnership actually exists between Affliction and Golden Boy or Golden Boy feels really confident that there is no sort of cross-over audience between the two sports. I’m going with the former.

Hell, by the way things have gone, you’d think Golden Boy was more the UFC’s partner than Affliction’s.

Oscar De La Hoya actually makes public comments on Golden Boy’s relationship and intentions with MMA in this video. He says they’re still considering the hybrid cards but have decided to take a step back and slowly get their feet wet for now, however, he says they are committed to getting into mixed martial arts. We shall see.