Gennady Golovkin vs. Dominic Wade is better fight than Canelo-Khan

By Boxing News - 02/02/2016 - Comments

Image: Gennady Golovkin vs. Dominic Wade is better fight than Canelo-KhanBy Dan Ambrose: IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs) is expected to face unbeaten #3 IBF Dominic Wade (18-0, 12 KOs) on April 23 at The Forum in Inglewood, California. The fight hasn’t been announced as of yet by Golovkin’s promoters at K2, but Wade, 25, is said to be the likely opponent for Golovkin’s interim fight on 4/23 on HBO.

While Golovkin will be facing the tough as nails Wade, WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs) has pooled from the welterweight division to find Amir Khan (31-3, 19 KOs), who will be forced to move up in weight two divisions to face Canelo at a catch-weight of 155lbs.

Khan reportedly didn’t want to take the fight at middleweight. He wanted to fight Canelo at least at junior middleweight, but it failed to happen, as you would expect. Canelo, 25, is in a much better position to get his way in negotiations than a fighter like Khan, who hasn’t been involved in a big fight since his loss to Danny Garcia four years ago in 2012.

Khan was in no position to bargain for anything. In my view, the Golovkin-Wade fight is a much more interesting and potentially competitive fight than a fight between Canelo and Khan. There’s no real suspense with Khan-Canelo because the fans know too well that Canelo will use his big weight advantage to batter Khan until he drops for the 10 count. Khan might be around the same height, but he’s probably going to be giving away close to 30 pounds to Canelo.

That’s not going to be good. Canelo will go out there and it won’t even be sporting. He’ll just bludgeon the rail thin Khan until he drops for the KO. At least with the Golovkin vs. Wade fight, we’re talking about two guys that are roughly the same size. Additionally, Wade has never tasted defeat before, so he doesn’t know how to lose a fight unlike Khan. Wade will be bringing it from the first round looking to try and KO Golovkin before he himself gets knocked out in this fight.

Before today’s announcement for the Canelo-Khan fight, many boxing fans felt that Canelo would fight the likes of Willie Monroe Jr., Vanes Martirosyan or Gabriel Rosado. Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya says it was he that came up with the idea of matching Canelo against the 147lb Khan.

“People were just throwing names out there,” De La Hoya said to ESPN.com. “So the way it came about was we said to ourselves, what fighter can create a mega event with Canelo? What fighter have we worked with in the past? What fighter has no promoter? I instantly thought about Amir Khan. I gave [Golden Boy vice president] Eric [Gomez] a call and told him we have to seriously think about Cinco de Mayo weekend for Canelo and I came up with the idea,” De La Hoya said.

I don’t agree with De La Hoya about Canelo-Khan being a “mega event.” I think it’s far from it. De La Hoya selected Khan, a fighter that mainly the hardcore boxing fans are familiar with, not the casual fans. This isn’t going to be a mega-event unless De La Hoya puts Khan on the top of an open air bus and has him travel through all the major cities in the U.S, while he bellows through a loud speaker about the fight.

It would be an introduction of sorts for Khan. On the side of the bus, they could have a large video screen that shows some of Khan’s finest moments during his career and not the bad parts where he was getting knocked around the ring by various opponents. I don’t think there are enough hardcore boxing fans that are enamored with Khan to sell the fight and bring in huge PPV numbers.

During the press tours, Golden Boy will need to keep Khan and Canelo far apart, because if they bring them close together, the fans will see how much smaller Khan is compared to Canelo. The fans might smell a rat when they see the difference in size with the light heavyweight sized Canelo standing next to the 147lb Khan.

My guess is the Canelo-Khan fight will bring in maybe 200,000 pay-per-view buys on HBO if they’re lucky. I don’t see the fight oing as well as Canelo’s past PPV fights on HBO like his recent fight against Miguel Cotto, which brought in 900,000 buys last November. I don’t even see the fight doing as well as Canelo’s two fights against Erislandy Lara and Alfredo Angulo, both of which brought in around 300,000 PPV buys.



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