By Dan Ambrose: The tickets are going fast for the October 17th unification fight between IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs) and IBF 160lb champion David Lemieux (34-2, 31 KOs) for Madison Square Garden in New York. As of Tuesday, over 5000 tickets have already been sold in the pre-sale for MSG.
The tickets officially go on sale this Wednesday, August 12th at 12:00 p.m. ET. With a little over two months to go before the Golovkin-Lemieuix fight, there is a good chance that they’ll be able to sellout the 20,789 seat Madison Square Garden.
That’s very impressive considering that only top fighters like Miguel Cotto are able to sellout MSG. If Golovkin can prove that he can sell it out as well, it would be a huge accomplishment and put him in the same class as Cotto in his ability to sell out arenas.
“GGG-Lemieux tix pre-sale began Tues & has already sold over 5k tix. Best pre-sale MSG has had, surpassing Wladimir-Jennings & Cotto-Margarito 2,” Dan Rafael said on his Twitter. “GGG-Lemieux will have a 3-city media tour (not open to public). 8/18 in NYC, 8/19 in Montreal, 8/20 in LA. #boxing.”
HBO, K2 Promotions and Golden Boy Promotions are really going all out with a three-city media tour for the GGG vs. Lemieux fight. This will definitely help drive interest in both selling tickets for Madison Square Garden and getting boxing fans to purchase their fight on HBO pay-per-view on October 17th. Having a media is very important, and visiting three cities is a good tour.
It would obviously be better if they were able to hit more cities, but it costs a lot of money to do the tours and it’s probably not in their budget at this time. In the future, Golovkin will likely be involved with longer media tours when he faces the winner of the Cotto vs. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez fight next year. Having Golokin-Lemieux 24/7 on HBO would also help in making the fight much bigger.
If Golovkin can outdo Canelo and Cotto in terms of the PPV buys for his fight against Lemieux, it would be a major accomplishment. Lemieux’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya of Golden Boy Promotions isn’t under any illusions that the fight will sell a lot of PPV buys, but you never know. De La Hoya obviously doesn’t want to put his neck on the line by making a bold prediction about the PPV buys the fight will generate because he’s in unknown territory. You just don’t know what Golovkin and Lemieux can bring in.
Golovkin with “Mexican style” is getting a lot of Mexican boxing fans to follow him, and this in turn could result in the Kazakhstan star being adopted in a way by the Mexican people. Golovkin’s Mexican trainer Abel Sanchez has changed his fighting style completely from the Eastern European style to more of the Mexican style that we saw from the great Julio Cesar Chavez. If you look at the way Golovkin cuts off the ring and attacks his opponents, it’s like watching Chavez in action. It’s very impressive to watch. What Golovkin has lacked all this time was good opponents for him to show what he can do. In facing Lemieux, Golovkin has his first high quality opponent for him to show what he can do with his Mexican style.
Earlier today, the Roman Gonzalez vs. Brian Viloria fight became official for the Golovkin-Lemieux undercard. That’s a huge fight for the card and it’s going to help attract a great deal of interest for the card. It’s a fight that is worthy of being a main event fight on its own.
Gonzalez is the GGG of the flyweight division, and 28, he could soon get to the level where Golovkin is at if HBO keeps televising his fights. With a 43-0 record with 37 knockouts, Gonzalez is a dangerous knockout artist, and his opponent Brian Viloria is also a big puncher himself. This is a fight that has knockout written all over it. One of these guys won’t see the final bell.
“So excited to see you guys coming in from all over. @TheGarden, we are going to have a full house. What do you think? #GGGatMSG,” Golovkin said on his Twitter.
Comments are closed.