By Dan Ambrose: Saul “Canelo” Alvarez will never fight Gennady “GGG” Golovkin, according to Sergey Kovalev’s trainer John David Jackson. He doesn’t see Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy Promotions ever letting Canelo take the fight against Golovkin for fear that if he loses to the Kazahstan fighter, it will cause him to stop bringing in money to Golden Boy.
Jackson sees Canelo as the only money maker that Golden Boy has right now, and he doesn’t see them taking any chances of losing him by putting him in with a dangerous fighter like Triple G. Jackson thinks that Golden Boy will keep pushing the 34-year-old Golovkin fight into the future until he’s old and not the fighter that he is now. These thoughts are echoed by many boxing fans, who see Canelo and Golden Boy waiting until Golovkin is old, toothless and using a walker to get around the ring before they eventually face him. Canelo is only 26, so he can wait another 10 years if he wants until Golovkin is 44 before making that fight in order to increase his chances of winning if he wants to.
Jackson thinks that they’ll go ahead and match Canelo against an old Golovkin, possibly in 2018.
“This is what’s wrong with boxing. Here you have Canelo. He’s a good fighter,” said Jackson to Fighthype.com. “[Canelo is] far from great. Floyd [Mayweather] spanked him, so he’s got a lot to learn. He’s a money maker though. Golden Boy [Promotions] would be crazy to let him fight Triple G right now or anybody else to knock some of the luster off of him, because they’re making money off him. Right now, it’s all about dollars and cents, so why would they get him bumped off? This fight will never happen. They pushed it back to 2017, next year. It won’t happen as long as he’s making money. Do you think Golden Boy wants to lose their cash cow? Floyd and Oscar are gone. You can’t make anymore. But they found another one. It won’t happen. If he loses, the cash cow is gone. What is he, 35? They’ll keep making Triple G wait until 2018. By then, you might get him. It’s a fight that fans deserve to see. That’s a tough fight,” said Jackson.
Jackson is right about protecting cash cows as being something that is wrong with boxing. You don’t see that kind of thing happening in the NFL. The top teams aren’t protected from other top teams. They’re expected to play them. In boxing, you get popular fighters swerving around the best fighters in order to milk their titles or just to keep winning.
It makes sense for Golden Boy to nurture their golden goose Canelo for as long as the boxing public can stomach the mismatches that they’re putting him in with. It’s unclear how long Canelo’s boxing fans are going to be willing to pay to see him fight the likes of Liam Smith, Amir Khan, James Kirkland, Miguel Cotto and Billy Joe Saunders.
We’re going to find out soon enough because Golden Boy is likely going to keep feeding Canelo beatable guys. Canelo has never been a big million pay-per-view type of fighter, so we haven’t seen his PPV numbers drop off due to him being matched against guys like Alfredo Angulo, Kirkland and Khan. But if the future is only going to involve Canelo being matched against beatable opposition in fights that are a sure thing for him, then he’s going to cripple his own career by limiting his growth.
If Canelo isn’t going to be tested against the best fighters, then he won’t become a huge crossover star. He’ll be limited to pay-per-view buys in the three hundred thousand rather than in the millions.
It’s going to make Canelo look bad in 2017 if he or his promoters at Golden Boy choose not to take the fight against Golovkin. The boxing public is expecting that fight to take place after hearing from Golden Boy that they want to wait until the fall of 2017 to make that fight happen. If Golden Boy chooses to push the fight back another year, it’s going to cause a lot of fans to mistrust them and see them as protecting their cash cow Canelo. Golden Boy was supposed to have matched Canelo against Golovkin earlier this year after he became the mandatory challenger to his WBC title. Canelo didn’t fight him though. He instead vacated his WBC title after beating welterweight Amir Khan. Canelo is now fighting WBO 154lb champion Liam Smith on September 17.
After Canelo faces Liam Smith on September 17, he’s supposed to make a quick turn around by getting back into the ring three months later to fight WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders in December. There’s not much of a demand for that fight because Saunders isn’t a well-known fighter in the United States, and he’s not see as the best in his division.