By Chris Williams: Middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin’s fight against Daniel “Miracle Man” Jacobs last Saturday night failed to bring in the large pay-per-view numbers on HBO that some had hoped. According to Lance Pugmire, the Golovkin-Jacobs fight brought in a range of 130,000 to 150,000 pay-per-view buys on HBO. These are unofficial numbers though. HBO still hasn’t announced the official numbers for the fight. The 150K would equal the PPV numbers Golovkin’s fight against David Lemieux pulled in two years ago in 2015.
This isn’t good for Golovkin. He needed big PPV numbers for the Jacobs fight to help him get the deal he wanted with Canelo and Golden Boy. Bringing in only 150K buys on PPV, it means that Golovkin will probably need to take the deal on the table by Golden Boy.
“Early pay per view report shows GGG Boxing – Daniel Jacobs fight had buys ranging from 130k to 150k, according to industry source,” said Pugmire on his Twitter.
Those pay-per-view numbers will likely make it even harder for Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler to work a deal for a fight against Golden Boy Promotions star Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in September on HBO PPV. To be sure, the Canelo-Golovkin fight can still be made no matter how low Golovkin’s PPV numbers were for the Jacobs fight, but this obviously doesn’t help. Golovkin and Loeffler might have made a mistake by agreeing to put the Jacobs fight on pay-per-view rather than on regular HBO. If the fight had been on HBO Championship Boxing instead of PPV, it likely would have pulled in huge ratings, and Loeffler would be in a better position to make the fight against Canelo compared to now.
It was a gamble on Golovkin’s part to make the Jacobs fight PPV, and it seems that it’s backfired on him in a major way. Jacobs wasn’t a popular enough fighter for Golovkin to fight on HBO PPV. It was a mistake to ever agree to fighting a guy with no real fan base like Jacobs on HBO PPV. Golovkin and Loeffler should have let the Jacobs fight go to a purse bid and had it televised on regular HBO. It’s too late now to go back and do the fight the right way. That includes how Golovkin fought. He didn’t fight the right fight by being aggressive against Jacobs and shooting for a knockout.
If the 130K-150K pay-per-view numbers turn out to be correct, Golovkin and Loeffler are not going to be able to do much bargaining with Golden Boy for the Canelo fight. They already have a strike against them with Golovkin’s narrow win over Jacobs last Saturday night at Madison Square Garden in New York. A lot of boxing think Golovkin lost that fight. But even the fans that believe that Golovkin won, they don’t think he fought a good fight. Triple G was not impressive.
Loeffler and Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez should have sat him down and stressed to him the importance on him knocking Jacobs out as fast as possible in this fight, because he was already coming off of an unimpressive win over Kell Brook in his previous fight last September. Golovkin had a lot on the line for the Jacobs fight in needing an impressive win to increase his bargaining power for the Canelo fight, and he failed to do so.
“Mark my words: When Canelo and Golovkin gets made, Canelo’s not going to respect him one bit. Right from the start,” said De La Hoya to the latimes.com. “We’re ready to make this fight. We want to make this fight. Now we have to wait and see what happens with Chavez on May 6.”
De La Hoya is probably right about him wanting to make the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight. With the way Golovkin looked in struggling against Jacobs, De La Hoya likes Canelo’s chances of beating Triple G right now. Some boxing fans think Golovkin has deteriorated in his last two fights due to his age. He’s about to turn 35. The more likely reason for Golovkin’s bad performances is because a blueprint has been created in how to beat him. Brook created the blueprint last September, and Jacobs merely followed it by doing what Brook had done. Jacobs wasn’t quite as good as Brook, but he had a size and weight advantage over Golovkin. Jacobs outweighed Golovkin by at least 10 pounds to go along with his speed advantage.
I think Golovkin has been more or less exposed in his last two fights. It reminds me of how a baseball pitcher starts giving up a lot of hits. When teams find out how to deal with a certain pitcher, they can rough him up and drive him out of the league. Golovkin’s opposition has figured him out now, and it’s going to be tough on him from this point forward unless he makes adjustments to his game. From what I can see, Golovkin is still the same fighter physically. He’s just been figured out by his opposition.
The best thing Golovkin can do is learn how to throw sustained combinations because he’s going to need to do that in the future. Golovkin won’t beat Jacobs in the rematch throwing one or two punches and then getting out of the box. By the same token, Golovkin won’t beat Canelo fighting the way he did last Saturday against Jacobs. Golovkin needs to fight like Aaron Pryor to beat the top guys moving forward. Golovkin would have been a nightmare for Jacobs if he used Aaron Pryor’s fighting style last Saturday.