By David Preston: Over the last 12 months, there has been an intensifying desire to see Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin get inside the squared circle and do battle. Without question, this would be a fight every fan would want to see. Unfortunately, the politics of boxing, more specifically one man’s politics, has put the bout on hold.
By now every ardent boxing fan is aware of what has recently transpired between the camps of both fighters. From the name dropping to the tough post-fight talk to the promised good-faith negotiations to the senseless relinquishing of the WBC belt and so on. It is now abundantly clear that something is amiss.
It is this writer’s opinion that any blame for this fight not having already been signed and booked should lay squarely on the shoulders of Team Canelo. Specifically, Mr. Alvarez himself. Many would include Oscar as a complicit accomplice in this action; however, those who have followed Canelo know better. One need only look back to both the Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara encounters Canelo had in 2013 & 2014, respectively. An emerging star not yet at his present level overruled his promoter on both occasions and required that both fights be made. To say that Canelo does not have final say on who he does or does not fight is simply not true.
So here we are with the juiciest middleweight fight in a long long time sitting right in front of us and we can’t order it because it’s been taken off the menu. To his credit, GGG has said on multiple occasions that he wants the fight and no one has any reason to doubt him as he is still trying to attain true cross-over stardom and a KO of Canelo would undoubtedly provide it. He has every incentive to make the fight, provided the purse split is equitable. Although not yet on Canelo’s level from a marketing perspective, GGG is no slouch and his fan base has been growing exponentially with every fight. The split should reflect this.
Now that all the background work has been set, let’s talk about the’ Canelo Conundrum’, which is as follows: when you have a fighter who allegedly has an old school mentality of taking on all comers, never backing down from a challenge; however, has the popularity of an PPV attraction fighter with a business first mentality on making fights, what does he do?
I believe that Canelo is terribly terribly conflicted. Here is a young kid who has already achieved a level of stardom, mostly due to his tradition rich and rabid built-in Mexican fan base, which is the same fan base that wants to see the old school mentality in all its fighters – a blood and guts, toe-to-toe, take all challenges fighter. There is no doubt that Canelo takes pride in this heritage and wants to make these fans proud, but that’s not all he wants.
Canelo is a new-age Mexican fighter, one with a measure of glamour equal to the measure of his built-in Mexican toughness. A fighter who is looking to follow the FMJ blueprint of playing the ‘A’ side game of maximizing earnings while masterfully pulling the strings of his opponents.
So what does Canelo do? Does he keep playing the business of boxing while his fans have more reasons to doubt him, thereby risking the fame he has been given which coincidentally is a direct corollary to his self described ‘A’ side persona, or does he take the toughest fight of his life (outside of FMJ) and risk a loss and his future earning potential?
One can argue that if he takes the fight now and goes out on his shield in the event of a loss, it will not be seen as a career ending defeat, but one that shows his willingness to fight the best, and when it’s all said and done, in the final analysis of a fighters career their legacy is more about who they fought not who they lost to.