By Dan Ambrose: HBO commentator Max Kellerman said what many boxing fans already knew last Wednesday night when he said that WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (30-0, 27 KOs) needs one of the big names – Floyd Mayweather Jr, Miguel Cotto or Saul “Canelo” Alvarez to agree to fight Golovkin before he can become a pay-per-view seller in his own right.
It’s not enough right now that Golovkin is knocking out everyone he faces dating back to 2009. He needs to get a scalp from the like of Canelo, Cotto or Mayweather for him to get to the next level.
It’s the same way that Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao both needed Oscar De La Hoya before they became pay per view stars on their own. Canelo had Mayweather, and Cotto had Pacquiao.
The problem that Golovkin has is that Cotto, Canelo and Mayweather have shown little interest in getting in the ring with him.
It’s quite possible that we may never see Cotto or Canelo agreeing to fight Golovkin until he starts showing signs of being a shot fighter, and by then it’ll be too late for Golovkin to become a PPV attraction. He’s up there in age at 32, so if Canelo, Cotto and Mayweather choose to ignore him for the remainder of their careers, it’s going to put Golovkin in a situation where he’ll need to move up in weight to super middleweight or light heavyweight for him to become a pay per view star.
There isn’t anyone with a big enough name to make Golovkin a PPV fighter at super middleweight. Andre Ward isn’t a popular fighter, so Golovkin gets nothing even if he beats him. If Golovkin could face the likes of Sergey Kovalev, Bernard Hopkins or Adonis Stevenson at 175, then that would greatly help his career. But it would be tough on him because he’s be fighting guys that are at least 15-20 pounds heavier than him.
“Once they asked that question about Marvin Hagler, this dominant middleweight who was knocking everyone out, but he couldn’t really crossover because they couldn’t find a way to get the big names guys in with Hagler,” Kellerman said on HBO. “Eventually he fought [Roberto] Duran and [Tommy] Hearns and Sugar Ray Leonard. But it started with Roberto Duran. That branding of Hagler and Duran and the publicity surrounding their closed circuit fight, that’s what launched Hagler. And that’s what Golovkin needs. They [boxing fans] see him punching holes in Matthew Macklin and the like, but until he’s punching holes in Miguel Cotto and Canelo Alvarez or Floyd Mayweather Jr if they could ever figure something like this out, he’s [Golovkin] not going to pass over to a pay-per-view seller. Eventually, he’s got to get a name in with him to raise his profile.”
Golovkin will be fighting WBC interim champion Marco Antonio Rubio (59-6-1, 51 KOs) next month on October 18th at the StubHub Center, in Carson, California, USA. This isn’t a fight that will do a lot for Golovkin’s career, but it will put him in position to become the WBC middleweight mandatory. That means that the winner of the Cotto-Canelo fight will either need to fight him or look bad in vacating the WBC 160 pound title in order to avoid fighting Golovkin.
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