Trash talk between fighters and their teams is commonplace before boxing matches, but the comments from Paul Dogboe, the father of interim junior featherweight world titlist Isaac Dogboe, ahead of his son's fight with full titleholder Jessie Magdaleno went too far, according to Top Rank promoter Bob Arum.
Magdaleno and Ghana's Dogboe are scheduled to meet in a mandatory bout on April 14 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas on the undercard of the Jeff Horn-Terence Crawford welterweight world title fight that headlines the Top Rank ESPN card.
On Tuesday, Paul Dogboe told Ghana's Pulse news website, "We hope Magdaleno will not run like a chicken. We hope he makes the weight and comes in with no excuses because we are ready for him. We are ready to eat him like a chicken. We are focused, and our only mission is to devour him, eat the crazy chicken, throw him over the wall of Mexico and present the title to Donald Trump. Magdaleno will run when he sees Isaac."
Arum, a vocal critic of Trump, especially because of his stance on immigration and desire to build a wall on the United States' southern border, took exception to Paul Dogboe's comments.
"I condemn the intolerant rhetoric coming from Isaac Dogboe's father regarding Jessie Magdaleno and advise him to apologize," Arum said.
Magdaleno's family is of Mexican heritage, but he was born and lives in Las Vegas.
Magdaleno (25-0, 18 KOs), a 26-year-old southpaw, will be making his second title defense. He won the 122-pound title by controversial decision from Nonito Donaire in November 2016 and defended it once in 2017, with a second-round knockout of Adeilson Dos Santos. Injuries and weight problems have kept him out of action since.
Dogboe (18-0, 12 KOs), 23, knocked out Cesar Juarez in the fifth round on Jan. 6 in Accra, Ghana, to claim the vacant interim belt made available while Magdaleno was recovering from a hand injury.
Crawford (32-0, 23 KOs), 30, of Omaha, Nebraska, the former undisputed junior welterweight world champion and a former lightweight champion, is moving up to welterweight after vacating the junior welterweight belts last summer in order to challenge Horn (18-0-1, 12 KOs). Horn, 30, controversially won the 147-pound belt from Manny Pacquiao in July and retained it by 11th-round knockout of Gary Corcoran on Dec. 13.
Although Top Rank has not officially announced the card because it is finalizing elements of the deal with ESPN, the Nevada State Athletic Commission selected the officials to work the three world title bouts on the show at its monthly meeting Tuesday.
Tony Weeks was assigned to referee the fight between Horn and Crawford. Assigned to judge the bout are Ignatius Missailidis, who is from Horn's home country of Australia, Nevada's Burt Clements and Guido Cavalleri of Italy.
Benjy Esteves will referee Magdaleno-Dogboe, and the judges will be Eric Cheek and Dave Moretti, both of Nevada, and New Jersey's Steve Weisfeld.
There is a third world title fight on the card. Junior bantamweight titlist Jerwin Ancajas (29-1-1, 20 KOs), a 26-year-old southpaw from the Philippines, will make his fifth defense when he takes on mandatory challenger and countryman Jonas Sultan (14-3, 9 KOs), 26.
Russell Mora was assigned to referee the fight, and Nevada's Tim Cheatham and Connecticut's Glenn Feldman and Don Trella will judge the contest.