De La Hoya says Canelo has upper-hand in Golovkin negotiations

By Boxing News - 05/09/2016 - Comments

Image: De La Hoya says Canelo has upper-hand in Golovkin negotiationsBy Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya believes he’s got the upper hand in the negotiations between his fighter WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and interim WBC champ Gennady “GGG” Golovkin due to Canelo being perceived as the new face of boxing now that Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao are no longer around the sport.

De La Hoya is interested in trying to put together a fight between Canelo and Golovkin, but it will need to be one that they feel is to their liking. Just what Canelo and De La Hoya are looking for from the negotiations is the important question.

A catch-weight request of any kind on the part of Canelo and De La Hoya could be a deal-killer, because Golovkin has no interest in fighting at a catch-weight.

“Obviously, Canelo is the superstar. There’s no doubt about who the man is in boxing,” De La Hoya said to the latimes.com “It’s like a game of poker. I have four aces and they probably have a pair of twos.”

Just how serious Canelo and De La Hoya are about the Golovkin fight will be determined shortly. Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler said he was contacted by De La Hoya last Sunday and they have agreed to meet with each other in the coming days to try and pound out an agreement for a fight between Canelo and Golovkin.

“If they understand that it’s the max [160-pound] limit, everything else is negotiable,” said Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez to latimes.com.

It’s hard to imagine De La Hoya and Canelo not pushing for a catch-weight for this fight because Canelo seems to believe he needs one for some reason. As big as he was in the Amir Khan fight last Saturday night, it’s impossible to know why Canelo would need for Golovkin to melt down to 155. It seems like a game.

Canelo is young and very good at dehydrating down to the extremes to make the 155lb catch-weights he’s been using. It’s got to be really hard on his body though for him to be doing this. You don’t want to see Canelo hurt himself physically by taking too much weight off one of these days and wind up in the hospital with circulatory collapse or kidney shutdown. The guy needs to be fighting in a division that is more conducive to his body size rather than melting down to 155 to gain advantages over smaller guys.

“That’s the fight to make. . . . I feel confident my side can come to an agreement and make the right deal,” De La Hoya said to the latimes.com. “This is the next super-fight that [will] bring the fans that [Floyd] Mayweather and [Manny] Pacquiao subtracted” with their disappointing May 2015 bout. “They’re going to want to see it and fall in love with boxing over Canelo and Golovkin.”

This fight could be the end of the line for Canelo in terms of him winning big fights. Canelo was beaten previously by Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2013 in a big money fight. Since then, Canelo has defeated two smaller fighters than him in Miguel Cotto and Amir Khan in pay-per-view fights on HBO, where he had the clear advantage over them with his superior size. However, against Golovkin, Canelo will be fighting someone the same weight as him but with better punching power.

Perhaps that’s why Canelo and Golden Boy have been so eager to get a catch-weight against Golovkin, because the only way for Canelo to get an advantage in this fight is if he can get catch-weight to weaken the Kazakhstan fighter enough for Canelo to win. Some boxing fans might say this is dirty pool, but this is also business. When you’re the A-side, you can do things to make sure you win fights like using catch-weights or picking out opponents that haven’t fought for long periods of time. We saw that with Canelo fighting ring rusty and weight drained fighters in James Kirkland and Alfredo Angulo.

When you go one step further, then you see Canelo being matched up against a welterweight in Amir Khan. These are all fights that are slanted in the favor of Canelo because he had an advantage in all three of those fights.

If Golden Boy can catch-weight advantage for Canelo against Golovkin, then he could very well win this fight too. You’ve got to figure that Golovkin is the last guy that stands in the way of Canelo from being able to dominate the sport. If Golovkin can stop him, then Canelo will be back to square one. If Canelo wins that fight, then I can’t see him losing for a long time to come. Of course, I also don’t think Golden Boy will put Canelo in with any risky fighters like Jermall Charlo or Daniel Jacobs.