By Dan Ambrose: After toiling away for years as a pro, IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs) is on the cusp of superstardom if he can win his next two fights against IBF 160lb champion David Lemieux (34-2, 31 KOs) on October 17th and against the inner of the November 21st fight between WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (40-4, 33 KOs) and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (45-1-1, 32 KOs).
If Golovkin wins those two fights, he’ll be a huge star and will likely be a pay-per-view fight from this point on. However, it’s quite possible that Golovkin won’t get a chance at fighting the winner of the Cotto-Canelo fight, because they may opt not to fight him due to the risk involved.
Canelo hasn’t fought Golovkin all this time despite it being a logical fight for him to make. The same goes for Cotto. Both of them have been taking soft opposition like Alfredo Angulo, James Kirkland, Delvin Rodriguez, Sergio Martinez and Daniel Geale. If Golovkin can’t get the winner of the Cotto vs. Canelo to fight him, then it might take Golovkin several more fights against the best available contenders in the 160lb division before he can become a permanent PPV star for HBO.
The winner of the Cotto-Canelo fight will lose a lot of popularity by choosing not to fight Golovkin, but the fans they lose will be hardcore boxing fans. The casual fans likely won’t be aware that Cotto or Canelo are dodging the fight with Golovkin, so it’s possible they won’t be hurt by avoiding a fight against him.
Golovkin is getting a chance to show what kind of attraction he is with his fight against Lemieux on October 17th on HBO pay-per-view. The fight has already had over 10,000 tickets sold for their Madison Square Garden [MSG] venue in New York. The venue holds a little over 21,000 fans, and they’ve got over two months to sell the remaining 11,000+ tickets.
If they can sellout MSG, and bring in over 1 million PPV buys for this fight, then it really won’t matter if the Cotto-Canelo winner chooses to continue to duck the fight against Golovkin. Yes, it’ll hurt Golovkin a little by him not being able to get a fight against the winner of the Cotto vs. Canelo fight but it won’t be fatal.
Golovkin and the Cotto-Canelo winner can stay in separate lanes until Cotto or Canelo works up the nerve to finally face Golovkin. Hopefully, they’re not going to try and wait Golovkin out until he’s in his late 30s before making the fight. We heard Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya of Golden Boy Promotions say that he’s not going to let Canelo fight Golovkin for another two years because he wanted to let the fight marinate more to make it a bigger fight.
I’m not sure what HBO thinks about that idea. If they’re going to continually give green lights to Canelo’s mismatches against rusty and out of shape fighters like James Kirkland and Alfredo Angulo without applying some pressure on Canelo and De La Hoya to have him face better opposition, then they’re going to turn him into a guy that’s popular for no reason.
Hopefully it doesn’t get to the point where HBO needs to learn on Canelo and Golden Boy to force him to fight Golovkin, because the last thing Canelo needs is to be pressured into a fight against Golovkin. If he’s comfortable fighting at middleweight, then he needs to move down and fight in the junior middleweight instead of fighting at middleweight at 155lbs.
I don’t know why Canelo wouldn’t want to fight at middleweight, because he’s rehydrating to the mid-170s and weighing more than Golovkin for his fights against junior middleweights.
If you’ve got a 175lb junior middleweight like Canelo, why is he fighting at junior middleweight or at catch-weights of 155 pounds in the middleweight division? That’s 20 pounds Canelo is putting on when he rehydrates for his fights. He’s more of a middleweight than Golovkin despite the fact that he’s melting down to fight junior middleweights at 155.
“This record-breaking pre-sale only confirms that this fight will be one of the most exciting of the year as the best meets the best for middleweight supremacy,” said De La Hoya about the 6000 pre-sale tickets that were sold for the Golovkin-Lemieux fight.
De La Hoya also promotes Lemieux. It’s going to be a huge blow to De La Hoya and Golden Boy Promotions if Golovkin obliterate Lemieux in one or two rounds to prevent him from moving forward to fight the winner of the Cotto-Canelo fight. De La Hoya is in a situation where he has two chances to line up one of his fighters to face Golovkin.
If Lemieux gets whipped by Golovkin, then Canelo will have a chance to get the fight if he can beat Cotto. Like I said, we don’t know what De La Hoya will do if Golovkin destroys Lemieux. It might put De La Hoya off the idea of matching his flagship fighter Canelo against Golovkin, because the last thing De La Hoya and Golden Boy Promotions needs is for Golovkin to destroy two of their biggest names in Lemieux and Canelo within one year of each other.
Lemieux and Canelo are young enough to rebuild their careers after losing to Golovkin, so it’s not as if it’ll be all over for them. All De La Hoya will need to do is trot out Kirkland and Angulo again for them to beat up, and then they’ll be back. De La Hoya might even be able to bring in some new blood like Joshua Clottey for Canelo to sharpen his claws against.
De La Hoya wanted to match Canelo against the aging Clottey last December, but Canelo couldn’t take the fight due to an ankle injury. But you’ve got to figure that Clottey remains high on the list for opponents for Canelo rather than some dangerous junior middleweights/middleweights like Jermall Charlo or Demetrius Andrade.
Golovkin wants to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2016. That remains a potential option for him if he can’t get the winner of the Cotto-Canelo fight to face him. Even if Golovkin does destroy the winner of the Cotto vs. Canelo fight, Mayweather would be a great opponent for him to face next year at 154 if Mayweather agrees to take the fight.
I don’t think he will because Mayweather’s opponent for his September 12th fight, Andre Berto, tells you the direction Mayweather is going in with his career. He’s in the milking stage and just looking to make money the easy way.
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