By Allan Fox: HBO analyst Max Kellerman says he’d like to see superstar Floyd Mayweather Jr. (48-0, 26 KOs) take a chance and fight WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs) before he retires from the sport. Kellerman doesn’t like the idea of Mayweather fighting former IBF/WBC welterweight champion Andre Berto on Showtime pay-per-view.
Kellerman thinks that will be a tough ask to try and get boxing fans to purchase a potential mismatch like that after the fiasco that took place last May with Mayweather’s win over Manny Pacquiao. That fight turned out to be a dull affair with Mayweather beating a passive looking Pacquiao.
Kellerman understands why Mayweather wouldn’t want to fight Golovkin right now because the fight wouldn’t be worth the risk to him right now. However, it’s a fight that could wind up being a big deal if Golovkin beats IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux in their fight on October 17th, and then defeats the winner of the November fight between WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez.
If Golovkin defeats Lemieux and the Cotto-Canelo winner, Kellerman believes that Golovkin could become a million pay-per-view type fighter, and he thinks it would then be well worth it for Mayweather to fight Golovkin under those circumstances. We saw what kind of PPV numbers the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight brought in last May, and that was a case of Mayweather facing a fighter that was only bringing in between 350,000 to 850,000 pay-per-view buys per fight in the last three years. If Golovkin turns out to be a million PPV fighter, then Mayweather vs. Golovkin could eclipse the 4.4 million PPV buys that Mayweather-Pacquiao brought in. Mayweather could scoop up another $200+ million to add to his already huge fortune. Mayweather could leave boxing with a net worth of half a billion dollars. That’s a lot of money.
“Now we’re clamoring for Triple-G. I would love to see him [Mayweather] him fight Triple G,” Kellerman said via Fighthype. “I think Triple G would knock Floyd out. I don’t think Floyd would get anywhere near him. It’s much easier to say ‘Oh, I’d beat him than to actually try and beat him. He could say it’s not worth the money yet. Let’s see what Golovkin and Lemiuex do on pay-per-view. Let’s see what kind of [PPV] buys that does. If it does a surprising amount of buys, and then Canelo beats Cotto or vice versa, and the winner could fight Triple G. Stylistically, if that’s Canelo, then that’s a Hagler-Hearns type of action fight. If Triple G wins that fight, at that point, maybe he’s a million pay-per-view mover, and then it could make business sense [for Mayweather to fight Golovkin.”
You can’t say for sure that Golovkin would be able to beat Mayweather, because he would have to be able to catch him in order to line him up for his big knockout shots. Golovkin mostly scores knockouts with his left hook. That’s not a punch that he’s going to be able to land with any regularity against a fighter like Mayweather.
We’re going to find out soon if Golovkin can become a huge PPV seller by next year if he beats Lemieux and the Cotto vs. Canelo winner in back to back fights. If those two fights bring in huge PPV numbers, then you can say that Golovkin is ready to face Mayweather. Right now, there are too many question marks about whether Golovkin can bring in the PPV buys are not for the risk to be worth it for Mayweather to fight him. What would be really interesting is if the Golovkin-Lemieux fight brings in better PPV numbers than the Cotto vs. Canelo fight. That would be a real surprise and a big indication of how popular that Golovkin is now. The fans would be basically saying that they rate Golovkin higher as a fighter than Cotto and Canelo, which makes sense because hardcore boxing fans already see Golovkin as better than those two fighters. What we don’t know is if they also are interested in seeing him fight more than Cotto or Canelo.
If Mayweather wants to get out of the sport with a huge payday, Golovkin might be the way to go for him. I seriously doubt that boxing fans are going to want to pay to see a rematch between Mayweather and Pacquiao after the bad experience they had last May in paying $99+ on pay-per-view to see a dull fight. At least if Golovkin were involved, you can bet that it wouldn’t be dull. He wouldn’t shy away from attacking Mayweather like Pacquiao did after he got hit with some right hands in the first two rounds. Pacquiao fought like someone who was afraid to get hit. It makes sense because he was knocked out viciously by Juan Manuel Marquez in 2012, and this was the first fight in which Pacquiao had fought someone really good since then when he faced Mayweather.
Comments are closed.