By Dan Ambrose: Middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin and his promoter Tom Loeffler will be waiting for the results of this Saturday’s clash between Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. to try and face the winner of the fight in September. As previously reported, Golovkin (37-0, 33 KOs) will not be fighting on June 10 against WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders.
Golovkin will wait and see what he can get against the winner of the Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight. Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler says that he was banged up in his close win over WBA World middleweight champion Danny Jacobs on March 18. It was too much of a grueling fight for GGG to return to the ring so soon for a fight against Saunders in June. It’s really not good news for Golovkin that he’s not taking the fight with Saunders, because it would be a fight that would have attracted a lot of interest in the UK with the British boxing fans.
Saunders will instead now have to defend his WBO title against interim WBO middleweight champion Avtandil Khurtsidze on June 8. There’s a very good chance that Saunders loses that fight. Khurtsidze is a big puncher. If Golovkin decides to go after Khurtsidze at a later date to try and win the WBO middleweight strap, it would be a lot tougher to grab the belt.
Loeffler is still in contact with Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy Promotions. He wants to make a fight between Golovkin and Canelo in September. That’s the fight that Golden Boy CEO Oscar De La Hoya has been talking about for over a year now. He’s strung it out this long because he wanted the fight to marinate, and he also wanted Canelo to grow into the division as far as his frame. Loeffer is going to try and put together a Canelo-Golovkin fight quickly with Golden Boy after this Saturday’s Canelo vs. Chavez Jr. fight takes place. However, Loeffler will need to have some kind of cutoff date for the negotiations so that Golovkin doesn’t get strung along for nothing.
Golovkin wasted a lot of time in the last year trying to get the Canelo fight, and it’s thus far not worked out. It’s perhaps helped Canelo with Golden Boy being able to name drop Golovkin’s name to pump up interest in his fights against Amir Khan, James Kirkland and Liam Smith. But at some point, Golovkin and his promoters at K2 Promotions need to move on and not be strung along. Golovkin, 35, isn’t young enough to devote years of his career trying to get an elusive fight against Canelo.
“Gennady is not going [to] fight in June,” Loeffler said to ESPN.com last week. “It was a quick turnaround after the Jacobs fight, and we would have liked to have done a fight with Billy Joe Saunders, but it was just too quick of a turnaround. So we’ll see now, when Gennady is ready to fight, what the biggest opportunities are.”
Chavez Jr. would be the ideal opponent for Golovkin, because he’s someone that would actually take the fight with him. But for a match between those two to be worthwhile, Chavez Jr. will need to beat Canelo this Saturday. It doesn’t work for Golovkin if all he’s going to get is Canelo’s leftovers.
The boxing public would not like the idea of Golovkin targeting Chavez Jr. with him coming off of a knockout defeat or any kind of defeat against Canelo. The boxing fans would want to see Golovkin only facing the winner of the Canelo-Chavez Jr. But what the casual fans don’t know is it takes willingness from Golden Boy and Canelo for a fight between Golovkin and Canelo to take place. If they really don’t want the fight, then it doesn’t matter what Golovkin and K2 Promotions do. They’re not going to be able to fight the 26-year-old Canelo.
“We’ll see what happens. If Chavez wins, we’d love to have a Chavez fight, also,” Loeffler said. “If Canelo wins, that would be the priority. I’m still in contact with Golden Boy. I speak to [Golden Boy president] Eric Gomez probably like twice a week. We’ll see what happens on May 6 and see if we can make a deal.”
Ideally, it would be excellent if Golden Boy and Canelo start promoting the Golovkin fight inside the ring after Canelo beats Chavez Jr. on Saturday night. That’s what De La Hoya said he wanted to do. He said he wanted to start the promotion for the Canelo-Golovkin fight right there inside the ring after he defeats Chavez Jr. Whether De La Hoya will actually do that is the big question. You have to assume that if De La Hoya doesn’t start promoting the Canelo–Golovkin fight immediately next Saturday after the smoke clears from the Chavez Jr. fight, then it’s probably not going to happen.
What makes the Canelo-Golovkin fight unlikely to happen is Golden Boy’s decision to place David Lemieux in the co-feature bout against Marcos Reyes. De La Hoya has openly admitted that Lemieux is an option for Canelo in September, as well as a rematch against Chavez Jr. De La Hoya says Canelo could fight Chavez Jr. in September if he loses to him next Saturday or if there fight brings in a lot of PPV buys on HBO. They would want to take advantage of the huge interest by putting Canelo in with Chavez Jr. as soon as possible, meaning in September. Canelo plans on fighting in December as well, but Miguel Cotto is expected to be his opponent in that month, because he’s going to be retiring at the end of this year. Cotto is a priority for Canelo.
It’s nice that Loeffler is in weekly contact with Golden Boy president Eric Gomez, but that doesn’t mean anything. If the big boss at Golden Boy, Oscar De Le Hoya, doesn’t want to risk his prize golden goose Canelo against Golovkin, then it doesn’t matter if Loeffler is talking with Gomez or not. All that does is give Golovkin Boy the chance to name drop and say to the boxing media that they’re negotiating with Golovkin. They don’t ever have to actually fight him. They can just continue to say they’re in negotiations with Golovkin’s promoters for ages. If the fans always believe that a Canelo-Golovkin fight is just around the corner, they’re more likely than not to want to purchase Canelo’s fights against guys like Chavez Jr., Liam Smith and Amir Khan.
Golovkin’s fight against Jacobs brought in 170,000 PPV buys on HBO from March 18. Golovkin boxed the entire time instead of attacking the much bigger looking Jacobs the way that he’d done his previous opponents. By not trying for a knockout, Golovkin allowed Jacobs to stick around for the full 12 rounds and then cry that he’d won the fight. He hadn’t. but it was close. The really bad news that came out of the fight for Golovkin was the low number of PPV buys the fight generated. Without the fight bringing in a lot of buys, it put Golovkin and promoters at K2 in bad shape to negotiate a fight with Golden Boy for a match against Canelo.
There was nothing that Golovkin could do to bring in more PPV buys, because he wasn’t facing a big name in Jacobs. But Golovkin could have done a better job of attacking Jacobs to try for a knockout. That was the wrong time for Golovkin to switch his fighting style to focus more on boxing instead of slugging. He needed an impressive performance against Jacobs, and he failed to do so.
