By Dan Ambrose: Now that Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao are nearing the end of their career, boxing is looking for the next star to take over for these two fighters at the No.1 pay-per-view attraction in the sport. We’ve already discovered that Mexican star Saul “Canelo” Alvarez doesn’t have the talent to be the next guy.
As it is, he barely got past Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara in controversial decision wins. Mayweather easily defeated Canelo in 2013, and the red-haired fighter doesn’t appear to have improved at all since then.
Golovkin still needs one or two big wins for him to get to the next level to where he becomes a PPV attraction. He’s likely not going to get any help from Canelo and Miguel Cotto, two fighters that make the most sense for him to fight in 2015. Those guys have shown no interest in wanting to get inside the ring with Golovkin, and that likely won’t change until Golovkin starts looking shot.
Cotto isn’t young enough to wait out Golovkin, so we’ll likely never see him bother to take the fight with him. One way for Golovkin to still become boxing’s next PPV star is by him staying as busy as possible. He’s already fighting four times a year, but now he’s talking about wanting to increase that to six or more fights per year.
If that’s possible it would be a huge boost for Golovkin’s career because he would be seen frequently by boxing fans. But it’s not likely that HBO would have the available dates to show Golovkin’s more than four times per year.
Other than Golovkin as the next No.1 PPV star, there are guys like light welterweight contender Danny Garcia and Sergey Kovalev. Those fighters have a lot of talent and are quickly winning more and more fans. But Garcia will likely not be able to step up to the level of becoming a PPV attraction because he’s struggled in several of his recent fights against Lamont Peterson, Mauricio Herrera and Lucas Matthysse.
Those were not PPV level performances from Garcia, and he hasn’t helped himself by failing to give rematches to those fighters to prove that he could beat them without controversy. Kovalev, 32, likely won’t be able to get to the level of becoming boxing’s No.1 PPV star because he doesn’t have the popular enough opposition for him to become a star.
Kovalev did a great job of beating Bernard Hopkins last year, but he needs more wins like that for him to become a PPV attraction.
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