By Chris Williams: If IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs) wants a big money fight against Mexican superstar Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (45-1-1, 32 KOs) in 2016, then Golovkin will need to agree to the 155lb catch-weight that Canelo wants him to agree to in order for him to get the fight, says trainer/ESPN analyst Teddy Atlas.
Canelo is the one who brings in the pay-per-view buys and he’s the much bigger star than the Kazakhstan native Golovkin, so he can ask for anything he wants. It won’t bother Canelo if Golovkin says ‘no’ to his request for a 155lb catch-weight because Canelo will be fine if he never fights Golovkin.
Many of Canelo’s fans have never even heard of Golovkin, so he won’t lose any fans if he doesn’t bother fighting him. If Golovkin doesn’t get a fight against Canelo, then he’ll probably never become a huge star. At 33, Golovkin doesn’t have much time left. He’s almost the same age as Miguel Cotto, and you can expect him to start going downhill in the near future as he ages.
“[Canelo] makes money. He’s got a great audience, a great, great Latino audience, the greatest boxing audience in the world. He has that power,” Atlas said to esnewsreporting. “Canelo has that audience, he has that power. He can do good PPV numbers and because of that (power) he can demand that because Golovkin can’t make big money. Golovkin can make good money, decent money, but not big money.”
Atlas is right. Golovkin doesn’t bring in the big money on PPV, as we saw in his recent fight against David Lemieux this month. You can say that many of the 150,000 PPV buys on HBO came from Lemieux’s fans, not Golovkin’s. But 150,000 PPV buys is nothing compared to a fighter like Canelo, who helped Mayweather bring in 2.2 million PPV buys two years ago on Showtime.
You can well imagine what a fight like that would have attracted had it been televised on HBO PPV, with their larger subscription base. It probably would have brought in 3 million PPV buys at the very least.
Golovkin doesn’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to negotiating with Canelo. Either Golovkin agrees to the 155lb catch-weight that Canelo is asking him to, or he’ll probably never get the fight. I wouldn’t bother if I was Canelo to give Golovkin a second chance if he says no to the 155lb request.
Canelo should make it a take it or leave it offer, and if Golovkin and his promoter Tom Loeffler says ‘no’ to the offer, then Canelo should turn his back on Golovkin permanently and tell him that he had his chance to take the fight in order to send a message to future perspective opponents.
If you want a fight against Canelo, then you have to be ready to agree to whatever he asks. Canelo gave into the king Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2013 in order to get the fight with him, and now it’s Golovkin’s turn to have to bow and scrape the floor before the new king Canelo if he wants to get the fight against him.
“If Golovkin wants to [fight Canelo], he has got to probably do that with someone like Canelo who’s more known and more popular than him. I get it. If [Canelo} can demand [155] and get away with that, I get it. What I don’t like is doing [a catch-weight] and calling it a middleweight title fight,” he added. “You can go ahead [with the catch-weight] but don’t make it for a title. The middleweight division is 160 lbs.”
It doesn’t matter that Atlas doesn’t like the idea of a catch-weight in a title fight. The fact is it’s within the rules of the World Boxing Council. Golovkin and Canelo would be fighting for the WBC middleweight title if Canelo gets past the current WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto next month on November 21st.
If Golovkin doesn’t like the idea of fighting at 155, then too bad. He’ll then find himself in the same position as Guillermo Rigondeaux is in with him unable to get the bigger fights for his division. Golovkin will then have to be satisfied with trying to get a fight against the winner of the Andy Lee vs. Billy Joe Saunders fight. I see that as being the last big fight of Golovkin’s career, because Canelo likely won’t bother turning around and giving Golovkin a second chance if he says no to him and I wouldn’t blame him a bit.
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