50% of Golovkin-Wade tickets already sold

By Boxing News - 02/23/2016 - Comments

golovkin44By Dan Ambrose: The tickets for the April 23 fight between IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin and Dominic Wade are literally selling like hotcakes for their fight at the Forum in Inglewood, California.

With exactly two months to go before the fight, 8000 tickets have already been sold and it seems almost academic that the fight will sellout. It’ll be televised on HBO Championship Boxing, so fans that couldn’t get tickets will still be able to see it live. If Golovkin can sellout tickets like this against an over-matched opponent like the 25-year-old Wade, then what kind of tickets sales will we be looking at in a Golovkin vs. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez fight later this year? We might be talking about a fight that could sell out the 80,000 seat AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. Of course, that would require that Canelo agree to fight Golovkin, and right now it’s still not known whether the 25-year-old Canelo will ever agree to take that fight. I take that back. I do think Canelo will agree to fight Golovkin in the future, but it might not be until he gets a little older and starts showing signs of having lost some of his power and talent.

What’s surprising about the fast selling of tickets is the fact that the Golovkin-Wade fight is a mismatch. It’s arguably more of a mismatch than Golovkin’s last two fights against David Lemieux and Willie Monroe Jr. Wade, who is managed by the powerful Al Haymon, is a fighter that was clearly beaten in his last fight by 42-year-old Sam Soliman last June.

I’m sorry but Wade lost that fight in my view and he looked terrible. Even if you want to pretend that Wade won the fight, you cannot ignore how poor he looked at ALL TIMES. There wasn’t a moment in that fight where Wade looked good at all except for when he was walking into the ring. He looked like a formidable fighter until the bell rung in the 1st to start the fight.

Immediately it was then clear that Wade didn’t have the skills to do anything in the fight. That’s why it’s so surprising that the tickets are selling for the Golovkin vs. Wade mismatch, because it’s a poor match. The International Boxing Federation needs to get their act together to start ranking the better fighters at the top instead of at the bottom, because #3 IBF Wade should be at rock bottom at No.15 instead of where he’s ranked right now.

“We’ve sold over 8,000 tickets in just the first week of being on sale,” said Tom Loeffler, Managing Director of K2 Promotions. “This is the best pairing in boxing and fans have seen how fast tickets moved at our past shows in Los Angeles and New York City and don’t want to take a chance on missing out.”

What the quick selling of tickets shows is that it doesn’t matter who Golovkin fights. He can be matched up with pretty much anyone and the fans are going to purchase tickets. That doesn’t mean that Loeffler shouldn’t make more of an effort to find better opponents in the future than Wade, Monroe and Lemieux. But it does mean that the fans don’t seem to care who Golovkin fights. They’ll still gladly purchase his tickets in droves.

YouTube video

Golovkin is getting help in attracting interest in his card with the addition of WBC flyweight champion Roman Gonzalez (44-0, 38 KOs), who will be fighting in the co-feature bout against McWilliams Arroyo (16-2, 14 KOs). There are a lot of fans who want to see the 28-year-old Gonzalez just as much as they do Golovkin. The funny thing is the Gonzalez-Arroyo fight is just as much a mismatch as the Golovkin vs. Wade fight, maybe more of a mismatch.

“Gennady has that unique quality of putting on great performances in the ring and being able to sell out arenas across the country,” said Loeffler.

The ticket sales shows you that boxing fans want to see knockouts and not the finesse type of fights that they routinely saw with Floyd Mayweather Jr. before he finally retired from the sport. Golovkin has knocked out everyone he’s faced since 2008, and the fans can’t get enough of him.



Comments are closed.