Sanchez: Hopefully Cotto-Canelo winner faces Golovkin next

By Boxing News - 08/24/2015 - Comments

canelo1111By Dan Ambrose: IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez is starting to show signs of concerns about whether the winner of the November 21st fight between WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez will agree to fight Golovkin in early 2016.

Golovkin has to do his part first by beating IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux in their fight on October 17th on HBO pay-per-view. If Golovkin wins that fight against the Canadian Lemieux, then Golovkin will play a waiting game in seeing who emerges in the Cotto-Canelo fight, and whether the winner – or even the loser – will agree to fight him. Sanchez has reason to be worried because Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya of Golden Boy Promotions said that Canelo will eventually get around to fighting Golovkin in the future.

Just when he plans on doing that, De La Hoya couldn’t say. But what was immediately clear with De La Hoya’s comments is that Canelo will likely not be fighting Golovkin in 2016. Cotto will likely take the same stance except I don’t see him ever agreeing to fight Golovkin.

“We’re hoping the pay-per-view buys are as good as the sales of the tickets,” Sanchez said via thaboxingvoice. “Hopefully the winner of the Cotto-Canelo fight steps up and fights Golovkin. Then all four of them can go in a round robin like Hagler-Hearns, Leonard-Duran and fight each other.”

In a the best possible world the winner of the Cotto vs. Canelo fight would turn around and face the Golovkin-Lemieux winner in the first quarter of 2016, but I don’t see that happening. The only person has a good chance of getting a fight against either of those two fighters is Lemieux, and that’s because he’s with Golden Boy.

Win or lose, Lemieux has a good chance of fighting Canelo. Golovkin probably has no chance of fighting Canelo unless Canelo himself chooses to go against what De La Hoya wants him to do and pushes for the Golovkin fight. We saw Canelo do that in his fights against Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara in the past.

Those were fights that De La Hoya didn’t want Canelo to take because he saw them as risky fights for him. I know De La Hoya says he’s all about putting together the fights that boxing fans want to see, but when it comes to Canelo, his flagship fighter for his Golden Boy Promotions company, De La Hoya choose to be ultra-careful with him.

Instead of seeing Canelo matched against Golovkin, we see him fighting James Kirkland and Alfredo Angulo. Those were a couple of safe matches that obviously were given the green light by De La Hoya. Another safe fight for Canelo was Joshua Clottey, who he was supposed to have fought last December if not for Canelo having to pull out due to him having ankle problems.

When you look at the guys that De La Hoya is matching against Canelo, it’s pretty much mostly safe opponents except when Canelo pushes for particular opponents. What’s interesting is Canelo hasn’t pushed for the Golovkin fight for some reason. He pushes for Lara and Trout, but not for Golovkin.

What does that tell you? Lara and Trout aren’t big punchers, but Golovkin is. Canelo has sparred with Golovkin in the past, and it is unknown how that sparring session went for Canelo. You’d have to figure that Canelo got a good feel for the punching power and the talent of Golovkin in that sparring session and he might not be too eager to get inside the ring with him and risk getting knocked out cold by the Kazakhstan star.

It’s one thing for Canelo to fight guys like Trout, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Lara, and another thing altogether to fight someone with the kind of punching power that Golovkin has. If Canelo loses by a vicious knockout to Golovkin, it would likely do a number on Canelo’s career.

I don’t know that Golden Boy could continue to sell Canelo’s fights on PPV if Golovkin were to knock him out cold in front of the entire world. That’s why I have a strong feeling that Canelo won’t buck De La Hoya’s advice if he tells him not to fight Golovkin. The 25-year-old Canelo has an advantage in youth over the 33-year-old Golovkin, so he can wait him out two to three years until Golovkin is in his mid-30s before fighting him. But people age differently, and it could backfire on De La Hoya and Canelo.

While De La Hoya was a shot fighter at 34, Golovkin might be every bit as good at 35 or 36 as he was at 33, and it might be Canelo who is doing the aging prematurely. I wouldn’t be surprised if Canelo still gets knocked out by Golovkin in two or three years when/if they fight each other then. But at least for Canelo, he’ll have had two to three years of good pay-per-view sales before he takes that loss to Golovkin.

If Canelo fights Golovkin now, he’ll likely get obliterated and that will probably cause Canelo to take a huge hit on his future PPV sales. It’s hard for boxing fans to want to continue to purchase fights from a particular fighter after they get knocked out. We saw how Manny Pacquiao’s PPV numbers drop from the 1 million mark in 2012 following his knockout loss to Juan Manuel Marquez.

It wasn’t until Pacquiao was matched up with Mayweather last May that Pacquiao saw one of his fights go over 1 million buys again. Before Pacquiao’s loss to Marquez, he was routinely bringing in over 1 million buys each time he fought with the exception of his fight against Joshua Clottey.

“I think the fight has made the fans respond. The pre-sale sold 6000 [tickets in a couple of hours],” Sanchez said. “In one week, they’ve sold 15 [thousand tickets]. We haven’t got an update since yesterday, so it could be up to 16 of 17. The Garden is going to be sold out. The reason it’s going to be sold out is because we’re really giving the fans what they’re asking for. Whether it’s one round or 10 round fight, it’s going to be war inside the ring. Golovkin is giving the fans what they want to see. He’s giving them destruction. Unfortunately, we live in a morbid society. People want to see somebody get knocked out and get hurt. If you give the fans the type of fight that excites them, they’re going to come out. In this fight [Golovkin vs. Lemieux] there’s a similar fighter on the other side, so they’re responding even better.”



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