By Eric Baldwin: Now that Gennady “GGG” has dodged a bullet with his close win over Danny Jacobs last Saturday night, Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler is saying that a mega-fight against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez MUST happen in September for the fans. Loeffler needs to make sure that he doesn’t come across as too needy when it comes to the negotiation with Golden Boy Promotions for the Canelo fight. Loeffler has got to make it clear that Golovkin has plenty of other options if he doesn’t get a fair deal for the Canelo fight.
Loeffler says Canelo-Golovkin is the biggest fight in boxing right now, and he is ready to make the fight happen as soon as Canelo gets past his May 6th fight with former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Loeffler says he’s going to be flying back to Los Angeles this week to meet with Canelo’s promoter Eric Gomez of Golden Boy Promotions to discuss the Canelo-Golovkin fight.
Golovkin’s pay-per-view numbers for his fight with Jacobs on HBO were released on Friday, and the numbers are not huge. Golovkin-Jacobs pulled in 170,000 buys on HBO PPV based on Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports. He says that Loeffler is saying those are the numbers. That’s a little bit better PPV results from Golovkin’s first PPV fight against David Lemieux in 2015. That fight brought in a little over 150,000 buys on HBO PPV. But if the 170,000 buys for the Jacobs fight is accurate, then that could hurt Loeffler’s ability to negotiate a good deal for Golovkin.
“We’ve been talking to Golden Boy about doing the fight,” said Tom Loeffler to TMZ.com. “That’s arguably the biggest fight in the sport of boxing. Canelo has a tough fight against Chavez Jr. on May 6th, so we have to find out how that fight goes so we can make the Canelo fight. All indications from Golden Boy is they want to do it in September this year if Canelo wins. That’s such a big fight because the financial pot is so big. That fight has to happen. The public is demanding it. The media want it. Canelo vacated his WBC title last year. They always said they want to fight in September this year and now we’re coming up to that point,” said Loeffler.
Loeffler appears to be very optimistic that he’ll be able to put the fight together. To be sure, the Canelo-Golovkin fight can get made, but it might require that Loeffler accept a deal that is not nearly as lucrative as the original $15 million that was offered by De La Hoya to Golovkin. A lot will depend on what kind of percentage Loeffler will be willing to agree to for the Canelo fight. If he’s willing to go as low as 20%, it will help increase the chances of the match being made between Canelo and Golovkin. Canelo has a fight against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. on May 6th on HBO PPV, and the numbers for that fight could greatly dwarf the PPV numbers for the Golovkin-Jacobs. If Canelo-Chavez Jr. brings in substantially more buys, then it’s probably going to need for Loeffler to take a much smaller percentage to get the fight done.
It’ll help if Loeffler is open-minded about the process and doesn’t dig in his heels if the numbers is shockingly small. Canelo is the 800 pound gorilla right now on the PPV market, and he’s the guy that getting the huge PPV numbers in comparison to his counterparts. Golovkin is unfortunately coming off of a fight that failed to bring in big numbers on HBO. You can point fingers for why the Golovkin-Jacobs fight failed to do well, but it doesn’t matter now. What’s done is done. Golovkin and Loeffler will have to live with it and go into the negotiations with Golden Boy knowing what their position is compared to Canelo’s.
“When I get back to LA, I’ll sit down with Eric and see if we can finalize the last few points,” said Loeffler. “Again, we can have everything finalized, but if Canelo doesn’t win, it’s the same thing as last Saturday on Canelo’s side. But we’ll try and do everything we can to try and make that fight for the fans. I think that’ll be a great match-up between two of the best stars in boxing. That’s one of the things we agreed with. Golden Boy can pick the location. Gennady doesn’t care where he fights. He has a huge fan base in New York. Jerry Jones is definitely interested in hosting the fight at Cowboy’s Stadium. That fight can go anywhere. Wherever it goes, it’ll be a terrific match-up. Even Cowboy’s Stadium, it would completely sold out. That would be the biggest boxing event by far if it winds up in Dallas,” said Loeffler.
Obviously, the venue for the Canelo-Golovkin fight isn’t going to make or break the negotiations with Golden Boy and Loeffler. What will help make the fight happen is if Canelo’s fight with Chavez Jr. tanks badly on HBO PPV. That’s the best thing that can happen for Loeffler and Golovkin. Unfortunately for them, the Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight is expected to bring in a massive amount of buys. Some boxing fans believe it’ll bring in more buys than Canelo’s fight with Miguel Cotto in 2015. That fight took in 900,000 PPV buys.
If the Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight brings in that many buys, then Golovkin and Loeffler will be in bad shape for the negotiations with Golden Boy. Loeffler can stick it out in the negotiations and take what’s offered to him by Golden Boy in terms of the percentage split or he can have Golovkin go in another direction to see if he can increase his popularity with some “drama show” fights. If Golovkin can smash Billy Joe Saunders and Daniel Jacobs in his next 2 fights, he’ll be in better shape in 2018 to restart the negotiations with Golden Boy for a fight against Canelo in 2018. Right now, Loeffler is not in a good position to get a great deal for Golovkin.