Kellerman: Golden Boy is milking PPV with Canelo

By Boxing News - 09/22/2016 - Comments

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By Eric Baldwin: Max Kellerman believes that Golden Boy Promotions is looking to milk pay-per-view money by putting their fighter WBO junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (48-1-1, 34 KOs) in winnable fights against soft opposition rather than putting him in with unbeaten IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) in a fight that they feel he could lose.

Kellerman expects Golden Boy to put Canelo in with another pay-per-view milking fight next year in May 2017 on Cinco de Mayo rather than matching Canelo tough. Kellerman notes that a lot of boxing fans will be willing to pay to see Canelo fight in this PPV milking fights due to a future fight between him and Golovkin being right over the horizon.

So instead of Golden Boy making the fight now between Canelo and Golovkin, they’re having Canelo take soft opposition in sure thing fights that are bringing in money. Kellerman sees there being no point in having the Canelo-Golovkin fight extended past May of next year.

By Golden Boy waiting to put the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight together; it’s causing Canelo to take a lot of criticism from boxing fans. Canelo has been pretty good at taking the criticism, but it wouldn’t be necessary if Golden Boy had gotten it over with already by putting him in with Golovkin or against other top fighters. It can’t be good for Canelo to have boxing fans trashing him day after day month after month. Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya seems to think the Canelo-Golovkin fight will be a bigger one in the future.

“Yes, I believe it will,” Kellerman said about whether the Golovkin vs. Canelo fight will take place in 2017. “If course, I believed Mayweather-Pacquiao would take place years before it actually did happen. Mayweather and Pacquiao showed that if you have an opponent that the people wants to see you fight, you can keep milking pay-per-views, because it keeps the audience interested and keeps them buying your fights no matter who you fight. Until the people see that fans stop showing up, they try and keep milking it. In this case, Golden Boy, the promoter of Alvarez, [Oscar] De La Hoya, who never ducked anybody as a fighter, is on record saying he wants ‘to make this fight happen, it needs to marinate, Triple G needs to be a bigger star.’ Triple G is selling out arenas, really all across the world at this point on both coasts in LA and in New York, and in London most recently. He’s become a big star. Alvarez is an even bigger star. I feel bad for Canelo, because Canelo is not the ducking type, but he’s also deferring to his team. His promoter is saying that fights not worth the money yet, and because he doesn’t want to throw his promoter under the bus, he’s taking bullets from fans, saying ‘you’re ducking Triple G.’ I believe Golden Boy, the promoter, is for the time being ducking Triple G, because they know there’s a good chance their guy is going to lose the fight. So they want to milk a pay-per-view, which they just did this year, and they want to do one on Cinco de Mayo weekend next year and postpone Triple G until the fall of 2017. There’s really no good reason for the fan’s point of view why we have to wait past May for that fight.”

Here’s what Canelo said to Kellerman after his 9th round knockout win over Liam Smith last Saturday night at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

“I am the best at this moment in time. We are a team. I’m not going to blame my promoter or anyone else. I fear no one.”

De La Hoya seems to be betting at the fight will wind up doing better with the boxing fans because the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao fight wound up becoming a bigger fight by them waiting. I’m not sure the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight will wind up doing better by it being extended. There’s a chance that Golovkin could lose his next fight against Daniel Jacobs. That’s a potentially difficult fight for Golovkin. We’re not seeing Canelo taking on guys like Jacobs.

Canelo has been facing smaller guys like Liam Smith, Miguel Cotto and Amir Khan lately. Those fighters didn’t have the size to beat Canelo. But if Golovkin loses to Jacobs in their perspective fight on December 10, then a fight between Golovkin and Canelo is going to wind up making a lot less money. Golovkin and his management are confident that they can get past Jacobs, but you never know. If they lose that fight, then it’s going to be a real let down for Golden Boy and Canelo, because they’ll have missed their chance at facing Golovkin while he was still unbeaten and at the top of his game.