By Dan Ambrose: Tom Loeffler says there won’t be an immediate 3rd fight between IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin and Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez after their May 5th rematch. The plan is for Triple G to face WBO 160 lb. champion Billy Joe Saunders (26-0, 12 KOs) later this year in a unification fight for all 4 middleweight titles against GGG beats Canelo on the 5th of May.
Loeffler states that Golovkin will fight a trilogy match against Canelo (49-1-2, 34 KOs) in 2019, so that Triple G can win the last middleweight title off Saunders. Loeffler isn’t sure whether the Golovkin-Saunders can be made, but he’s willing to try to negotiate the fight. If Saunders prices himself out by asking for too much money, then Golovkin will go in a different direction and leave him to his fate. Saunders will lose to one of his mandatory challengers sooner or later, and then Golovkin can face the new champion in a unification fight.
”We agreed that whoever wins [the May 5th fight], we would decide if a third fight makes sense. There will not be an immediate fight after that,” Loeffler said to Holylosangeles.com. “If there is a third fight, it will not be an immediate trilogy. If Golovkin wins, he will unify the title with Saunders,” Loeffler said.
If Canelo loses to Golovkin on May 5th, which many boxing fans expect to be the case, then the Golden Boy Promotions star will likely take a confidence builder fight against the likes of David Lemieux rather than taking a risky match against one of the good middleweights like Jermall Charlo, Sergiy Derevyanchenko, Daniel Jacobs or Demetrius Andrade. The downside of Canelo fighting Lemieux is the Canadian fighter is coming off of a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision loss to Saunders on December 16 in Quebec. The fight was shown in the U.S on HBO Boxing. That means a lot of fans saw Saunders school Lemieux. If Golden Boy is going to try and rebuild Canelo after his May 5th rematch with Golovkin, they might need to look in another direction than Lemieux if they want to wow the boxing public.
Loeffler says Las Vegas is going to be hard to beat for the venue for the second Canelo vs. Golovkin fight. Loeffler is hoping the rematch will take place at Madison Square Garden in New York, but he’s not sure if it will or not.
“May 5 in Las Vegas is like a holiday, especially with Mexican fans supporting the sport as they do,” Loeffler said.
It puts Golovkin at a disadvantage that he’s fighting Canelo on a Mexican holiday on May 5th. That means that many of the boxing fans will be Canelo’s fans. To add to that, Golovkin is the B-side of the promotion despite being the 3-belt world champion and Canelo just the Ring Magazine middleweight champion. Loeffler says they had to give Canelo and Golden Boy concessions to get the fight with the Mexican star. Some of those concessions were that Canelo gets to have his name in front of Golovkin’s in the promotion of the May 5th fight. So instead of it being Golovkin-Canelo, as you would expect it to be, Canelo has his name in front of Golovkins. Canelo gets to be introduced second and come in the ring after Golovkin, which gives the appearance that he’s the champion instead of the other way around. In effect, Golovkin is viewed by the boxing public as the challenger instead of the champion. It’s all upside down to what you normally see in a fight between a champion and a challenger. Loeffler says they had to agree to these concessions for Golovkin to get the fight with Canelo.
“Cinco de Mayo in Las Vegas is going to be hard to beat,” Loeffler said to secondsout.com. “It’s like a natural boxing holiday in Las Vegas.”
Golovkin will need to take the judges and the crowd out of play if the rematch ends up taking place in Las Vegas for May 5th. The previous Canelo-Golovkin fight was scored as a 12 round draw by the Las Vegas judges on September 16 at the T-Mobile Arena. The fans saw Golovkin as the winner. Loeffler doesn’t see why the rematch can’t have the very best judges available so that there’s less chance of another controversial result like last time.
”Everything was fine until he got the scores,” Loeffler said of the scores from the judges for the previous Canelo vs. GGG fight last September. “If it goes back to Las Vegas, there’s been some questionable scorecards with even the Floyd [Mayweather] fight with Canelo, and a couple of other fights. I don’t think anyone in the world had Canelo winning 10 rounds, like 1 of the judges. It’s not really so much the Commission. It’s the judges themselves. That was such a wide score. That’s what people were talking about,” Loeffler said.
The fans were commenting not only on the judge that scored the fight 10 rounds to 2 in Canelo’s favor [Adalaide Byrd], they were also commenting on the judge that scored it 114-114, Don Trella. That judge gave Canelo round 7, which was the most one-sided round of the fight with Golovkin hammering Canelo for the entire round. The other 2 judges saw Golovkin winning round 7. Trella didn’t. If he’d scored round 7 like the other 2 judges, then Golovkin would have won the fight by a 12 round split decision. The scoring of the fight by these 2 judges ruined the results, because the fans didn’t agree with them.
”There is no reason why the three best judges in the world cannot be assigned to this fight, there is no reason why no. We have many judges in boxing, there is no need for controversy, “ Loeffler said.
Loeffler needs to make sure he speaks up this time to have 1 or more of the judges switched out if the Nevada Commission assigns judges with past histories in turning in controversial decisions. As long as Loeffler is able to have his voice heard and get his way in challenging any questionable judges assigned, then he needs to do that. It’ll be bad if the Commission assigns judge with a history of turning in oddball scores that make little sense like the scores turned in by 2 judges for the Canelo-Golovkin fight last September.
Canelo has never had any problems with scoring in his fights in Las Vegas. You don’t hear Canelo and Golden Boy complaining about the judges from the first fight, and they’re not dragging their feet about having the second fight with GGG in Vegas. In fact, Las Vegas is where Canelo and Golden Boy Promotions want the rematch with Golovkin. Why wouldn’t they? The scoring from last time saved Canelo from a loss. Going back to Vegas is not problem for Canelo, because nothing bad happened to him last September. All it was all good for Canelo. A draw by the judges made the fight as if it never happened. Everything is the same. Golovkin can’t ask for more money than he got last time, because he didn’t get the win.
Canelo gets a second big payday fighting Golovkin with him likely taking the bigger cut once again. The only thing Golovkin can do is make sure he takes judges out of the picture entirely by knocking Canelo out in the 2nd and 3rd fight. You can bet that the trilogy fight will wind up taking place in Las Vegas as well.