By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya has made his decision in selecting the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada for the May 6 fight between Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. to fight. The Canelo-Chavez fight card starts at 9:00 pm. ET/6:00 pm. ET.
The two fighters will be battling it out on HBO PPV at a catch-weight of 164 ½ pounds. De La Hoya chose the T-Mobile Arena over the giant 90,000 seat AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. It should be interesting to see how much the ticket prices are for the Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight at the T-Mobile Arena.
Will Golden Boy Promotions hike the prices through the roof due to the arena being small or do they sell them at an affordable price so that the boxing fans can purchase them. The venue is likely going to sellout almost immediately for this fight, because a lot of fans are very excited about this fight. It’s weird how the fans are eager to see the Canelo vs. Chavez Jr. fight, because it’s not the fight that the knowledgeable fans want to see.
The hardcore fans have been asking Canelo and Golden Boy to make a fight against unbeaten IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) for the longest time. The casual fans are the ones that are driving the interest for the Canelo (48-1-1, 34 KOs) vs. Chavez Jr. (50-2-1, 32 KOs). They want to see this fight even though Chavez Jr’s career and activity level is pretty much similar to that of James Kirkland.
You can argue that Chavez Jr. is another Kirkland in terms of activity with his career and lack of being relevant in this day and age in his respective division. By the way, Canelo already fought Kirkland in 2015. The fans wondered by Canelo chose to fight Kirkland in 2015 rather than one of the highly ranked contenders in the 154lb division like Jermall Charlo.
Now Canelo is making a similar weird move by facing Chavez Jr. in his next fight. and the casual boxing fans don’t seem to mind. You can argue that Chavez Jr. is someone that they’ve heard of, but the relevant fighters like Jermall Charlo and Golovkin are probably fighters they’ve never heard of.
There had to have been a good reason for De La Hoya to select Las Vegas over the AT&T Stadium, because he would have had an excellent chance of selling out the stadium if he’d selected that venue for the fight.
This is good for boxing fans that live in the area of Las Vegas, because they won’t have to travel all the way to Texas to see Canelo and Chavez Jr. face each other. Putting the fight in the state would have been a hardship for a lot of fans. But on the positive side, it would have made it possible for more boxing fans to see the fight live due to the large 90,000 seat stadium.
De La Hoya had a good reason for wanting to stage the fight at the T-Mobile Arena rather than putting the fight at AT&T Stadium, where Canelo brought in over 51,000 fans for his last fight against former WBO junior middleweight champion Liam Smith on September 17 last year.
There’s still no official word yet which fighters will be on the undercard of the Canelo-Chavez Jr. card. Hopefully, this isn’t going to be a similar skeleton card as we saw in the ‘Fight of the Century’ between Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao in May 2015. If you remember that card, the undercard was an arguably extremely poor one despite the huge money at the expense of the promoters. Instead of stacking the card, the Mayweather-Pacquiao undercard had the following fights: Vasyl Lomachenko vs. Gamalier Rodriguez, Brad Solomon vs. Adrian Granados, Jesse Hart vs. Mike Jimenez, Christopher Pearson vs. Said El Harrak and Leo Santa Cruz vs. Jose Cayetano. It was just a terrible undercard. Hopefully, the Canelo-Chavez Jr. doesn’t have a similar undercard, because the boxing fans should be able to see something good on undercard on a card that is being built up as the biggest fight of the first half of 2017 like Canelo-Chavez Jr.
“When my team and I talked about where to hold what will be the biggest fight of the first half of the year – we kept coming back to Las Vegas,” Golden Boy Promotions Chairman and CEO Oscar De La Hoya said. “The biggest fights of the last 30-plus years have taken place in Vegas, and it is a natural home for this enormous event.”
The Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight will be taking place on the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo on May 6. If it hadn’t been Chavez Jr. as Canelo’s opponent, then it likely would have been WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders. De La Hoya got Canelo in position to challenge Saunders by having him beat WBO 154lb Liam Smith last September, and then requesting with the World Boxing Organization to be installed as the No.1 contender at 160 for Saunders.
Golden Boy changed their mind about matching Canelo against Saunders when they were able to get Chavez Jr. to agree to the fight. Chavez Jr. probably should have held out for a better deal when it came to the catch-weight of 164.5lbs for the fight, as well as the $1 million per pound weight penalty for the fight. Chavez Jr. is going to have to deal with if he comes in over the limit for the catch-weight.
You can argue that the Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight might make it impossible for a Canelo-Golovkin fight from taking place later this year. The reason why is because De La Hoya is already talking about putting Canelo back in with Chavez Jr. for a rematch and possibly even third fight.
Golden Boy already has Miguel Cotto booked as Canelo’s opponent for December. The only free date is September, which is when Golovkin was supposed to be fighting Canelo. But if the Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight does big numbers on HBO PPV, and if the fight is even remotely close, we’re likely going to see a rematch between them in September. This isn’t sport. This is business.
A fight against Golovkin would be sport, but we’re very likely going to see that fight pushed to the side in favor of the more business friendly rematch between Canelo and Chavez Jr. That’s why the Canelo-Chavez Jr. match-up may make the fight against Golovkin not likely for the foreseeable future. The Canelo-Golovkin fight probably will happen, but only after Golden Boy has exhausted the Chavez Jr. and Cotto fights for Canelo.
Once those rivalries are completely played out to the point where no more fights between them and Canelo can take place, then Golovkin might get his chance if he’s willing to agree to offer that Golden Boy gives him. That probably will mean that Golovkin will need to agree to a flat fee purse offer rather than a percentage deal of the revenue for the fight. The reason it’s not a good deal for Golovkin to agree to a flat fee rather than a percentage deal is because he doesn’t get to share in the revenue that he helps bring in for the fight if he doesn’t get a percentage of the money.