De La Hoya: Canelo-Golovkin can’t afford to wait longer than 2017

By Boxing News - 08/28/2016 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya is under the impression that he cannot afford to let his fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez to wait beyond 2017 before he matches him against unbeaten IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs) for their much talked about mega-fight.

De La Hoya feels that the Canelo-Golovkin fight is the biggest in boxing, and he wants to take advantage of that rather than waiting too long to finally put the bout together. De La Hoya sees the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight as the equivalent of the Marvin Hagler vs. Tommy Hearns fight.

De La Hoya thinks that it would be too soon to make the fight between Canelo and Golovkin right now, because the fans have just started talking about the fight a year ago.

The fans talked about – and waited for – the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao fight for six years before the match was finally put together last year, and it made big cash for Pacquiao and Mayweather as well as their promoters.

“This fight here, we can’t afford to wait longer than 2017,” De La Hoya said to International Business Times. “I think this fight right here is the biggest fight that boxing has today, and I think this fight would do huge numbers because of the fact that the fans know that it‘ll be a fight. It’ll be a knockout fight. It’ll be like Hagler-Hearns all over again.”

I totally agree with De La Hoya. Golovkin vs. Canelo will be a huge, huge fight when it eventually gets made. Where I do disagree with De La Hoya is the fight being made in 2017. I think De La Hoya needs to milk that fight for as long as possible so that he, Canelo and Golovkin can make the most cash possible.

2017 is WAY too early for that fight to take place, because the casual boxing fans in the U.S are only just now finding out about GGG. There are still a lot of fans who don’t have a clue one who Golovkin is. As long as Golovkin’s promoters at K2 Promotions are going to be matching him carefully against beatable guys like Kell Brook, then Golden Boy can afford to wait on the Golovkin-Canelo fight.

“Everybody was disappointed because it was a dull fight,” De La Hoya said about the painfully boring fight between Mayweather and Pacquiao in 2015. “But I strongly believe that this fight [Canelo vs. Golovkin] can bring back that fan base that we lost because of the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight.”

Yeah, I agree with De La Hoya. The Canelo-Golovkin fight has the potential to bring back the boxing fans that have bailed from the sport to MMA due to the excruciatingly boring fight between Mayweather and Pacquiao last year. It would help if De La Hoya makes sure that the fans aren’t royally gouged with super high ticket and pay-per-view prices like we saw with the Mayweather-Pacquiao. I mean, that was just wrong. They hiked the prices of that fight through the roof and didn’t do anything to put a good undercard with it.

At least with the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight, the fans have the potential of seeing a very, very good fight, even if the undercard is terrible. But it would definitely help if De La Hoya doesn’t charge a mint for the fight, because there are still a lot of angry fans that feel like they got ripped off by the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight last year. It would be better to try and lure these same fans back with a great fight at an excellent price. Instead of gouging the fans to the hilt, it would be refreshing to see Golden Boy and K2 Promotions offering the fans a great product at a fair price instead of what we saw recently.

“People were talking about Pacquiao-Mayweather for six, seven, eight years. People have just begun to talk about Golovkin-Canelo a little under a year ago,” De La Hoya said. “Canelo’s not a full-blown middleweight yet, and if you’re going to fight the very best middleweight out there, you have to do it at the right time and get the experience in that particular weight class.”

I think the weight is less important when it comes to Canelo vs. Golovkin. Canelo appears to be big enough right now for the fight to take place with them, but it’s not right time as far as the timing for the fight. In other words, it’s WAY too soon for the two of them to be facing each other. Golovkin vs. Canelo really needs to take place no sooner than 2020. It depends on how well Golovkin ages. If he starts looking long in the tooth, then Golden Boy needs to make the fight before he gets whipped by someone.

The last thing Golden Boy needs is for Golovkin to get beaten before Canelo fights him, because then their fight won’t be worth anything. Golden Boy needs to wait for the exact right time before they make the fight. I think Golovkin is good for another three to five years before the fight against Canelo is made. There aren’t any good middleweights right now to challenge GGG.

The only guys that can potentially beat Golovkin are at super middleweight and light heavyweight, and I don’t think he has any intention of risking his hide fighting anyone from those divisions. Golovkin has it good where he’s a right now fighting the likes of Kell Brook, Dominic Wade and David Lemieux. With those guys hanging around, Golovkin can sit back and take it easy for a number of years before there’s any real risk of him getting beaten.

De La Hoya can do it anyway he wants with his match-making, but I think he should wait beyond 2017 before he makes the Canelo-Golovkin. I’m not thinking this way in order to give Canelo a better chance of beating Golovkin. I’m talking about the fight needing a lot more time to marinate before it’s made so that it can make the most money possible before it gets made. Letting those two guys fight each other in 2017 would be stupid.

Even Mayweather said it himself that the Canelo-Golovkin fight needs more time to build before it’s put together. Canelo vs. Golovkin would be wrong to make it right now on a number of levels. If Canelo loses to Golovkin right now, then his future PPV fights would likely suffer for years and years with lower numbers. The fight itself won’t make the same money next year than it likely would in 2020 or 2022. The fight will have had four to six more years to marinate if Golden Boy makes it from 2020 to 2022. It’s already been marinating for a year now. Having it marinate another handful of years wouldn’t hurt because the fans are still going to be there and will still be interested in paying to see the contest.

Canelo will be fighting next month on September 17 against WBO junior middleweight champion Liam Smith on HBO PPV at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. This is a good fight for Canelo to pick up the WBO 154lb strap before he moves up in eight to the middleweight division in December to pick up the WBO 160lb title off Billy Joe Saunders. That’s an easy mark for Canelo.