By Gavin Howie: Boxing is a sport unlike no other, it’s more a business than anything else. The circus that was Floyd Mayweather v Conor McGregor was timed to perfection from Mayweather to steal some limelight away from the upcoming pay-per-view super fight between Gennady “GGG” Golovkin and Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez this Saturday night on September 16 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The biggest pay-per-view in history between Mayweather v Manny Pacquiao was a letdown, and 2 fighters who were many years past their best. In any other sport, you have no option but to come up against the best, if you want to be the best. Boxing is completely different, you can pick and choose who you fight, when you fight them, and in recent years you can even stipulate what weight you can fight at, especially if you are the main draw and you bring the PPV numbers.
The Golovkin v Canelo fight is the biggest in boxing now. There are no other fights that could compete with this, and this includes all active fighters only. Ex pros, pundits, and experts alike consider Golden Boy has picked Golovkin just at the right time as his most recent bouts has seen his performance dip slightly. Add to that his advancing years, and they believe they have picked the perfect time to cash in and put their golden goose in with the WBC, WBA, IBF, IBO Middleweight champion of the world. This is somewhat peculiar from the same fighter, who only a brief time ago gave up his WBC belt, rather than fight Golovkin for it. He now has rumored to have a grudge against the WBC, and refuses to fight for this title any more. This is some change for a fighter who until the Golovkin v Kell Brook fight, had little to no intention of ever getting in the ring with Golovkin.
Golovkin is seen by many as a devastating puncher, who holds the highest knockout ratio in middleweight history. He is indeed a very heavy-handed fighter, but he is much more than that. You only must look at his amateur record and credentials to see that power can only get you so far. He has surprisingly under rated technical abilities and technique to have amassed such an outstanding amateur record of 345-5. Compare that to Canelo’s amateur record of 44-2, and you can see Golovkin is a far more experienced boxer who has learned his craft to a tee, and has been avoided all through his professional career. He failed to get many opportunities behind the likes of Felix Sturm when he was with Universum and fought in Germany. He still managed to become WBA interim champion in 2010 after defeating Milton Nunez, this was elevated to WBA regular champion later in the year. It took until 2013, after signing with K2 and training under Abel Sanchez that he finally got his American debut by defeating Gregory Proska by a 5th round TKO. By now he was 30 years old and had eventually made his American debut. Golovkin still found difficulty in getting people to step in the ring with him. In early 2013, Golovkin’s manager had tried to get a fight with the Brit Darren Barker. He made a phone call to Eddie Hearn, who was unaware of Golovkin and stated he would be willing to fight for free, all he had asked for was some sponsorship logos on the ring, and some tickets. No money. Eddie Hearn thought this was a great deal, so he phoned Tony Sims who was Barker’s trainer and said, “I got Darren a shot against this guy Golovkin…Tony? He went [expletive] off, no,” according to the dailystar.co.uk. Eddie went on to say, “he doesn’t even want a purse”, and Sims again said “[expletive] off, no”, and hung up. This was the type of thing that was happening again and again, as nobody wanted to step in the ring with Golovkin.
There were no other fights for Golovkin that could generate the money and interest that the Canelo fight does. Perhaps a fight against Andre Ward, would be a good fight for the boxing purists, it would not get the casual fan or create the same amount of money that Canelo can bring. When you start to think about it in more detail, if Golovkin was to carry on his destruction the same way he had been, would the Canelo fight happen? I doubt it very much. Boxing is a business at the end of the day, a bit like a game of chess. You think several moves ahead of your opponent, and the penny had finally dropped with Golovkin and his team pre-Brook fight. This time yet another opponent had let them down, when Chris Eubank Jr had lost his pen. Brook stepped in, and set in motion the events leading up to the Canelo super fight. At age 35, Golovkin knows the major fight and biggest payday is against Canelo, that’s a fact. He and his team must have sat down and worked out the best strategy to secure this fight. They let Brook hit at will, looked lackluster against Jacobs, and held something back even when he had Jacobs hurt. He done just the bare minimum to get the win, and show enough cracks to team Canelo that has led them to finally agree to the fight. To get Canelo to not only agree to fight, but to agree to the full Middleweight limit for a fighter known for catch weights, and who has never fought at 160. Fighting against the top dog at 160, in his very first fight at this weight against a man who has the highest KO ratio in middleweight history, has a granite chin and a full 12 round fighter. This is a bit of a masterstroke from team Golovkin, and makes you ask the question, has Canelo been played?