By Allan Fox: Saul “Canelo” Alvarez isn’t ready yet to fight IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin, and he’s not saying when he will be ready to take the fight. Canelo says that when the fight does happen in the future, it’ll be Golovkin who will need to try and get ready for him and not the other way around. This means that Canelo expects to be the better fighter of the two when they do step inside the ring. Of course, if Canelo waits out the 34-year-old Golovkin until he’s older and lost his skills, then what he says about the better fighter would definitely apply.
Canelo has a fight next month against WBO light middleweight champion Liam Smith on September 17. After that fight, Canelo says he’ll fight in December, May and then September. His promoters at Golden Boy Promotions have pegged September 2017 for when the Canelo-Golovkin fight will take place. However, Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya has stopped speaking of next year for when the Canelo-Golovkin fight will be taking place.
De La Hoya is now back to square one where he’s saying the fight will eventually happen. It doesn’t sound like De La Hoya has any intentions of matching Canelo with Golovkin in 2017, and Canelo isn’t talking about that happening either. This means that we might not see a fight between Canelo and Golovkin until some later point in the future rather than next year.
The Golovkin match-up “is going to happen when the timing is right, when both camps are happy with negotiations. Right now, they’re talking about negotiations … they’re making things up,” said Canelo to the latimes.com. “People who say I’ve got to get ready for him — let’s make this clear: I’m not getting ready for him or the future. He needs to get ready for me.”
When Canelo says the Golovkin fight will happen “when the timing is right,” it is code for something that only he and his promoters at Golden Boy know the meaning. “When the timing is” could translate to mean when Golovkin is older than he is now, and starting to show signs of being over-the-hill. We saw Ricky Hatton not fight former IBF/WBA/WBC light welterweight champion Kostya Tszyu was up there in age 35 in 2005.
I don’t think there’s any question that if Hatton had fought Tszyu while he was still in his prime, he would have lost to him. Golovkin is about to turn 35 in April of 2017, and a fight between him and Canelo clearly won’t take place before that point. It’s very questionable whether it will happen while Golovkin is 35 either, especially if he looks really good in beating Kell Brook on September 10 next month and in his fight against a still to be determined opponent in December.
“The sport of boxing is a very dangerous sport. I worry about it. I worry about my future,” Alvarez said. “But the thing I worry about most is good fights for the future, to make sure I’m healthy and can give the best fights I can give at my own pace. I’ve been fighting the best since I was 23. There’s people out there who like to speak nonsense and stupidity.”
It sounds like Canelo is more concerned with staying healthy by fighting beatable guys right now than fighting the best. Fighting at “my own pace” sounds like a cautious way of picking out opposition and working his career. Canelo is 26, and he’s supposed to be fighting the best at this point in his career. While Canelo has fought some good fighters in Floyd Mayweather Jr, Austin Trout, Erislandy Lara and Miguel Cotto, he hasn’t fought the other top fighters like Golovkin, the Charlo brothers, Demetrius Andrade and Julian Williams.
Canelo lost to Mayweather and many boxing fans think he lost to Erislandy Lara too. Canelo’s win over Austin Trout had scores that were a lot more lopsided than the actual fight that took place. Mayweather saw the fight and said he thought the only thing separated the two was the knockdown that Canelo scored, otherwise it was a draw. Canelo arguably should have lost to Lara. As for Canelo’s win over the 5’7” Cotto in 2015, Canelo had a huge size advantage over the former light welterweight. The fight took place at a catch-weight of 155lbs, but Cotto was way too small for Canelo. It was like watching a junior middleweight fight a light heavyweight. Cotto never stood a chance of winning that fight based on how much bigger Canelo was than him after he rehydrated for the fight. Cotto should have made sure there was a rehydration clause in the contract that could have kept Canelo from rehydrating so much weight. At least if they had a rehydration clause, it could in theory have limited how much weight Canelo gained back. Of course, even rehydration clauses don’t keep fighters from quickly putting weight on the morning of the secondary weigh-ins. Fighters are clever and can put the weight back on in a real hurry. The only way to have a good rehydration clause is if the secondary weigh-in is 15 minutes before the fight in my opinion.
“By the time this fight happens, he’ll have a good chance of winning. He’ll figure it out more and Golovkin will be [older] by that time,” said Don Chargin to the latimes.
There’s no question that Canelo will have an excellent chance of beating Golovkin if they wait as long as possible until the Kazakhstan fighter is older before they make that fight. But by waiting for a long time to make the fight, there’s a possibility that they could wait too long. Golovkin could get beaten while they let the fight marinate.
I guess it really won’t matter if Canelo doesn’t get a huge payday fight against Golovkin, because he’s good money fighting little known champions like Liam Smith and Amir Khan. It would be a wasted opportunity for Canelo and Golden Boy to make huge money against Golovkin if they wait too long before they make that fight.
Canelo will be fighting WBO 154lb champion Liam Smith on September 17 on HBO pay-per-view at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. A big crowd of Canelo supporters is expected to turn up for the fight. De La Hoya believes the fight will sell more tickets and bring in more pay-per-view buys than the last big boxing match in that stadium between Manny Pacquiao and Antonio Margarito in 2010. That fight sold over 41,724 tickets and brought in 1.15 million pay-per-view buys on HBO. For De La Hoya to be projecting bigger numbers than that for a simple fight between Canelo and Smith suggests that Canelo is getting more popular with each fight. If that’s the case, then it really doesn’t matter if he eve fights Golovkin, because he can make big money fighting paper champions and flawed welterweights pulled up in weight like Amir Khan. Smith, 27, is a good fighter, but he definitely isn’t the best in the junior middleweight division despite De La Hoya’s claims of him being so. The important thing about the Canelo-Smith is that the numbers it brings in for PPV and ticket sales. If Canelo can get away with fighting little known guys like Smith and bringing in huge buys, then he doesn’t need guys like Golovkin, ever.