Golovkin’s promoter optimistic Canelo fight can still happen

By Boxing News - 05/24/2016 - Comments

Image: Golovkin’s promoter optimistic Canelo fight can still happen

By Patrick McHugh: Former two division world champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Golden Boy Promotions is dealing with a lawsuit this week with another promoter in Miami, Florida. Once Canelo and has taken care of that problem, he and Golden Boy are expected to restart the negotiations with IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin and his promoter Tom Loeffler to try and put together a fight on September 17 for AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

There’s also reportedly a chance that if Canelo and Golovkin can’t iron out a deal for September this year, they’ll face each other in May of 2017 on the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo.

Both fighters will take additional fights before then. Golokvin could potentially fight twice more in 2016 if the negotiations with Canelo and Golden Boy fail to produce a fight this year.

One of the first things Golden Boy and Loeffler will discuss when they start negotiating again is the purse split. Before Canelo recently vacated his WBC title, the purse split was said to be 55-45 in his favor. However, now that he’s no longer the WBC champion and not constrained to giving Golovkin near parity in the revenue split, he and Golden Boy are able to tilt the money in their favor considerably. Just how much they’ll insist on is a good question.

De La Hoya mentioned 90-10, but that probably won’t be doable because without Golovkin, Canelo is still making a lot less money fighting other guys. Some of the fighters that Canelo could wind up facing might beat him if chooses to fight the Charlo brothers, Demetrius Andrade or Daniel Jacobs. Another thing that Canelo could ask for is a catch-weight below the 160lb upper limit for the middleweight division.

Canelo couldn’t force the issue when he was the WBC champion because Golovkin was his mandatory challenger. But now that Canelo doesn’t have the belt, he can ask Golovkin for anything he wants in the weight department. The good news is that Canelo won’t go below 155 because it would be hurting him just as much as Golovkin if he does that. It’s a big unknown if a catch-weight would hurt Golovkin at all. It might have no real effect on him. If that turns out to be the case, then Canelo will need to depend on his own skills rather than on Golovkin being too weak to beat him.

“The negotiations are not dead,” Loeffler said to the latimes.com. “Canelo is still the priority for Gennady, and we’ll try to do what we can from our side to make that fight. It’s the biggest fight in boxing. Golden Boy and Canelo are dealing with that lawsuit now. They need to focus on that. It’s a fight we want to make and give to boxing fans.But there’s still plenty of time left to make the fight for September. It’s just a matter of sitting down when they’re finished and seeing if we can make all the pieces fit together.”

The purse split might be the tougher thing to work out than the weight, because there’s only five pounds that Canelo can ask for. He’s not going to ask Golovkin to drain down to 150, as if it’s some kind of game. But with the purse split, it could be a much tougher thing if Canelo and Golden Boy choose to take the lion’s share of the profits. If Golovkin and Loeffler agrees to the smaller percentage of the money, then they wouldn’t be taking advantage of the fan interest that they’re bringing to the fight.

Canelo would get their money and they would be dramatically short changed. In estimating a fair purse split, they’ll need to make a prediction of the amount of PPV buys that the fight will generate. If it’s well over a million, then that’s going to be way above Canelo’s normal average for his fights.

Without Golovkin, Canelo would likely be bringing in 400,000 to 900,000 depending on the opponent. But with Golovkin, the fight could hit 2 million buys. A 90-10 split in favor of Canelo leaves Golovkin with next to nothing for what he brings to the fight. That kind of split is given to smaller name fighters, not guys that sell out arenas the way that Golovkin has been doing.