By Dan Ambrose: Oscar De La Hoya of Golden Boy Promotions wants the rematch against middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin on May 5, according to Dan Rafael. He says De La Hoya spoke to Oscar this week, and he said the fight he wants next for Canelo is a rematch with Golovkin.
This is good news for boxing fans interested in seeing Canelo and Triple G face each other again, because it at least gives them hope that they’ll see this fight next in 6 months from now rather than having to wait another 10 months until September 2018 before the Canelo and Golovkin fight each a second time.
De La Hoya has recently talked of wanting to possibly match Canelo against the winner of the Billy Joe Saunders vs. David Lemieux fight, which will be taking place on December 16 on HBO Boxing. Golden Boy promotes Lemieux, so it would be a very easy fight to put together for the promotional company in matching him against Canelo. But, De La Hoya is now saying that he’s more interested in putting together the Canelo vs. GGG rematch. It’s possible that De La Hoya has seen the light, and he now realizes the importance of putting Canelo and Golovkin back inside the ring in May rather than waiting until September next year.
”That is exactly the opposite of what Oscar told me on the phone a few days ago. He said he wants the rematch next in May,” said Rafael at espn.com.
It would be very, very risky for De La Hoya to have Canelo fight Lemieux on May 5 next year, because he’d been getting hit by some huge shots in that fight. Lemieux doesn’t care how much head movement Canelo uses against him. He’ll just change things up and target Canelo’s body, which is always there to be hit. Golovkin isn’t a body puncher like Lemieux, so he didn’t target Canelo’s midsection in their fight last September. Golovkin could have gone after Canelo’s body and did damage.
Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler would be looking to match him tough in early 2018 if he can’t get the Canelo rematch. Loeffler has talked recently about matching Golovkin against Danny Jacobs, or putting him in with Jermall Charlo or Ryota Murata. Those are all tough fights for Golovkin. But it shows you that Golovkin isn’t going to be looking to take it easy in his next fight if he can’t get the Canelo fight.
Golovkin wants to fight the best, and prove that he’s the top guy in the division. The fight that Loeffler wants for Golovkin is a unification match against the winner of the Saunders vs. Lemieux fight. If Canelo takes the winner of that fight for himself, then it will leave Golovkin no other choice but to look to take on Jacobs again or fight Charlo, Murata or Demetrius Andrade. There’s also Sergiy Derevyanchenko, Golovkin’s IBF mandatory challenger. He would be a good opponent for Golovkin to fight in early 2018.
Canelo and GGG fought to a controversial 12 round draw last September at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. The boxing public had GGG winning the fight by a clear decision, but the Nevada State Athletic Commission assigned judges scored it 118-110 for Canelo, 115-113 for Golovkin and 114-114.