By Dan Ambrose: In response to the interview WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward did this week in saying that he was turned down by IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin’s management for a fight, Tom Loeffler, the promoter for Golovkin, says the reason why they turned down the fight with the 32-year-old Ward is because it would have been a bad time to take the fight.
Loeffler didn’t want to commit to a fight against Ward when he had a pay-per-view fight for Golovkin against IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux (34-2, 31 KOs). Loeffler thinks the money that Golovkin will make in his fight against Lemieux and the winner of the Miguel Cotto vs. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez fight would be more than the money they would have gotten for a fight against Ward.
Loeffler says that Ward’s promoters at Roc Nation Sports wanted a 50-50 deal with Golovkin. Loeffler thinks it’s better for Golovkin to wait until he fights Lemieux and the Cotto-Canelo winner before commiting to a fight against Ward, because they could get a better than 50-50 split of the money.
If Golovkin defeats Lemieux in their fight on HBO pay-per-view on October 17th, and if he beats Cotto or Canelo, he’d be in a position to get a bigger cut than 50-50 for a Ward fight. At the same time, if Golovkin-Lemieux brings in big PPV numbers, then it wouldn’t make sense for Loeffler and Golovkin to give Ward a 50-50 split of the revenue, because Ward isn’t a PPV fighter and he’s only fought once in the last two years.
“It would’ve been a bad deal to take,” Loeffler said via the latimes.com. “If the pay-per-view for the Lemieux fight is what we think it should be, Gennady would deserve more than 50% against Ward, considering Ward has barely fought outside of California. So it’s unreasonable to ask us to commit to that right now.”
Loeffler makes a lot of sense. It would be crazy for him to match Golovkin up against Ward right now until the smoke clears with Golovkin’s fights against Lemieux, the Cotto-Canelo winner, and against possibly WBO champion Andy Lee. If Lemieux could take those three fights and win them all, he’d be in a position to ask for a much better split of the revenue than 50-50 for a fight against Ward.
You could make an argument that Golovkin could ask for a minimum of a 75-25 split for a fight against Ward if not 80-20. It would be similar to the split that Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez had for their last fight against each other in 2012.
Pacquiao was the proven fighter with the PPV audience and this enabled him to get the lion’s share of the revenue. Marquez obviously pulled in a lot of fans, but he wasn’t able to ask for a 50-50 split because Pacquiao had already proven that he was the PPV attraction.
“Little G’ turned down an official fight with us,” Ward said to Fighthub.com. “The reality is for all the talk … the proof is in the pudding. I have an email right now that shows we gave them what they want … 50/50 … and the man — the promoter –turned it down, said maybe 2017.”
2017 sounds like a good date for a Golovkin-Ward fight because by then, Golovkin will have cleaned out the middleweight division and will be ready to face the likes of Ward. By 2017, Golovkin will either have cleaned out the 160lb division, or at least have cleaned out the division in terms of fighters that are willing to face him.
I don’t think Daniel Jacobs, Peter Quillin or Billy Joe Saunders will ever agree to fight Golovkin. But Andy Lee probably will. There’s only a small handful of fights for Golovkin at 160, and it’s unclear whether he’ll get those fights.
The Cotto vs. Canelo winner could turn down the fight with Golovkin, and instead let the World Boxing Council strip them of the WBC 160lb title for failing to defend the belt against Golovkin, who is the WBC #1 mandatory challenger at this time.
The worse thing that could happen to Golovkin is if the Cotto-Canelo and Lee-Saunders winners both decide they want nothing to do with fighting. It would be bad for Golovkin because he would be stuck fighting just the regular contenders in the middleweight division like Tureano Johnson.
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