By Patrick McHugh: Tom Loeffler of K2 Promotions is totally focused on WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez’s next fight against Amir Khan (31-3, 19 KOs) on May 7 next week. Loeffler wants to match his fighter interim WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs) against the winner of that fight.
If the Khan-Canelo winner won’t fight Golovkin, then Loeffler says Golovkin will take the WBC title from them and then move on. Loeffler would rather Triple G win the WBC title in the traditional way in the ring, but if the Canelo vs. Khan winner doesn’t want to fight him, then they must give up the title.
The World Boxing Council president Jose Suliaman backed Loeffler up this week in saying that the winner of the Canelo-Khan fight will be stripped of the WBC title if they don’t face Golovkin next.
Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy Promotions will be the ones that ultimately decide whether he’ll fight Golovkin next. Golden Boy CEO Oscar De La Hoya has been very vague with the language he’s used recently in talking about a fight between Golovkin and Canelo.
One gets the sense that De La Hoya would like to let the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight marinate as long as he can to build the fight up to the level of what we saw with the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao fight last year. But at the same time, De La Hoya is under a lot of pressure from the boxing world to make the Canelo-Golovkin fight happen sooner rather than later.
Canelo could lose to someone if De La Hoya waits too long to make the fight happen with Golovkin, and De La Hoya cannot keep matching Canelo against weaker opponents like he’s been doing. Putting Canelo in with James Kirkland, Alfredo Angulo, Miguel Cotto and Amir Khan can only last so long.
The fans are going to want to see Canelo fight guys his own size or at least fight the best from the 154lb and 160lb divisions. This means that Golden Boy will be pressured to have Canelo fight Jermall Charlo, Jermell Charlo, Daniel Jacobs, Golovkin and Billy Joe Saunders. If Golden Boy decides to exclude Golovkin’s name from that bunch, Canelo would still have all he can handle trying to beat the Charlo brothers, Jacobs and Saunders.
“It was clear that the winner of Canelo-Cotto was obligated to face Gennady. When Canelo won they asked us for a voluntary defence and we allowed it,” said Loeffler to skysports.com. “At this point, the winner of Canelo-Khan fights him or Gennady will just take the title. Canelo is a warrior who has fought guys that he didn’t need to fight, like Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara. Right now, a fight between Canelo and Gennady is the biggest fight in the sport. Their destinies are so intertwined that it will certainly happen in the future.”
The Canelo-Khan winner will have 15 days to decide whether or not they’ll fight Golovkin next. If they say no, then the WBC will step in and strip them of the title and give it to Golovkin. It won’t be so bad for Khan if he’s the one that gives up the WBC title because he’s a welterweight and he won’t take a lot of criticism from the boxing world by avoiding a fight against Golovkin to go back down to 147.
It’ll be a different story for Caneo. He’s just going to luck cowardly in the minds of a lot of boxing fans if he gives up his WBC to duck Golovkin. Canelo already looks bad with him fighting Khan rather than a middleweight. Canelo also looks bad with the way he’s been fighting at a catch-weight of 155lbs. He rehydrates into the 170s for his fights. Fighting at 155 gives the impression that Canelo is afraid to fight guys his own size at 160, and that’s not good.
“The position of the WBC is clear – it’s not as though Gennady has just become the mandatory, and they’re forcing the champion to fight him immediately,” Loeffler said. “It’s been over a year-and-a-half that he’s been mandatory.”
Loeffler and Golovkin shouldn’t have stepped aside the first time to let the Canelo v. Miguel Cotto fight take place. They made a mistake of letting that fight happen with the WBC title on the line because Golovkin was the mandatory for the WBC belt at the time and he was the one that was supposed to be fighting Cotto, not Canelo.
Golovkin let that fight take place with the WBC middleweight title used effectively as a prop to help validate that match-up to make it look more credible than it really was. If Golovkin had said no to letting Canelo take his turn at fighting for the WBC title, then Cotto would have been forced to vacate the WBC title and Golovkin would already be the WBC champion now. He made a mistake of thinking that the winner of the Cotto-Canelo fight would face him immediately when it was clear to many boxing fans that they weren’t ever going to do that. Golovkin and Loeffler need to learn a lesson from this by not ever agreeing to step aside in the future for any other fighter. Golovkin not only stepped aside for the Canelo-Cotto fight to take place, but he also allowed Canelo to take a voluntary defense against Amir Khan rather than face him immediately. This means Golovkin was passed by twice for title shots for the WBC title. If Canelo goes ahead and gives up the WBC title after the Khan fight, then Golovkin will have wasted a lot of time when he could have been the WBC champion.
Canelo will fight Golovkin at some point in the future but you can bet that when he does, the terms will favor Canelo. He might wait until Golovkin has aged enough to where the fight is more even, or he could get him to eventually agree to boil down to 155. Golovkin won’t do it now with the WBC title on the line and him the mandatory, but once Canelo gives up the WBC title, we could see Golovkin agree to a catch-weight in order to fight Canelo.