By Jeff Aranow: Saul “Canelo” Alvarez says he would like to fight middleweight champ Gennady Golovkin and Miguel Cotto after his May 6 fight against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., but they ask for a lot. Canelo says he made them a good offer for a fight. For now, he’s focused on his next fight against Chavez Jr. on May 6 on HBO PPV from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The offer that was made to Golovkin was reportedly a flat fee. Golovkin wants a percentage cut of the fight money. Golovkin will need to bring in a lot of pay-per-view buys in his next fight against Daniel Jacobs on March 18 for him to have the financial pull to get the percentage split that he and his promoter Tom Loeffler wants against Canelo.
Golovkin is not in the position right now to make demands against Canelo. There’s a definite imbalance in popularity between the two fighters. Canelo is a pay-per-view fighter, and the best in the U.S. Golovkin is merely a popular fighter, whose fights on HBO Championship Boxing bring in good ratings. Golovkin’s fight against Jacobs will be a real test for his drawing power on HBO PPV. If the fight fails to bring in large numbers, then it will make it difficult for him to get the purse split that he’s hoping to get against Canelo.
“(Chavez, GGG and Cotto) is what I want, they have already made an offer, they ask for the horns of the moon, they say they do not do it for that and in the end it is what they fight for,” said Canelo to ESPN Deportes. “We made a good offer, but right now I’m focused on May 6, which is what has already been done,” Canelo said.
It doesn’t sound like Golovkin is going to get Canelo to give him the percentage deal that he’s asking for. Golovkin can play it several ways. He can walk away from the Canelo fight and just forget about it. He can agree to the flat fee that Canelo and Golden Boy is offering him, or he can increase his own popularity by beating better fighters over time.
What Golovkin has working against him is his age. Golovkin is 34 now, and he might not be able to keep fighting at a high enough level for the number of years required for him to increase his popularity in a substantial way. For Golovkin to increase his popularity to the point where he’s a PPV attraction in own right, it might take a number of years.
That’s a problem. The other problem that Golovkin has is he doesn’t have enough popular fighters in the 160lb division for him to increase his popularity. If Golovkin were open to fighting fighters from the 154 and 168lb division, he could in theory become a PPV star in a short period of time. It would mean that Golovkin would need to fight top level fighters like Jermall Charlo, Erislandy Lara, Demetrius Andrade, James DeGale, Gilberto Ramirez, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and George Groves. Those would be tough fights for Golovkin, but if he were to beat some or all of them, he could become a PPV star.