Golovkin vs. Lemieux re-airs Saturday night on HBO @ 9:30PM ET

By Boxing News - 10/23/2015 - Comments

Boxing: Golovkin vs LemieuxBy Allan Fox: Tomorrow night, HBO will be televising the replay of the interesting if not exciting middleweight fight between WBA middleweight champ Gennady Golovkin and IBF champ David Lemieux, as well as the flyweight contest between WBC champion Roman Gonzalez and Brian Viloria.

The telecast starts @ 9:30 p.m. ET/6:30 p.m. PT. The replay will come before the HBO Championship Boxing fight between WBO 140lb champion Terence Crawford and Dierry Jean from the Centurylink Arena in Omaha, Nebraska.

The Golovkin-Lemieux fight ended in an 8th round knockout win for Golovkin. Gonzalez stopped Viloria in the 9th round. Neither of the fights was particularly competitive. They were slightly competitive, but not to a large degree. Lemieux was as over-matched as many boxing experts predicted that he would be. The same for Viloria.

Unfortunately for K2 Promotions, Golovkin, and Lemieux and his promoters at Golden Boy Promotions, the fight failed to bring in a lot of pay-per-view buys on HBO. Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler released the PPV numbers on Thursday and it wasn’t pretty.

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The fight only brought in 150,000 PPV buys. However, the gate did a respectable 2 million. Golovkin also got some sponsor money. Golovkin also got money from the international rights fees. Just how much is unknown. But what this does mean is that we’re not likely going to see Golovkin on HBO PPV unless he’s facing a big name like Miguel Cotto or Saul “Canelo” Alvarez.

We’re probably not going to be seeing Golovkin fight the likes of Alfredo Angulo on HBO PPV like we saw Canelo doing in the past. It’s going to take a big name for Golovkin to be fighting on PPV, because the numbers would have been much, much worse if he had faced a lesser middleweight like Willie Monroe Jr. or Martin Murray.

“It was a coming-out party for Gennady,” Loeffler said to Michael Woods of RingTV.com. “He was finally able to get another champion to fight him in a sold-out arena. The energy from the crowd was amazing. As for a small number of people saying it was a flop, that PPV number was what we went over when we talked about it with HBO. Based on ticket sales and media response, we thought we had a chance to go over than what we got. But listen: Gennady has never been fixated on money; for his fights, he wants to get the best opponent, even if we have to overpay.”

For Golovkin to become a big PPV guy in the future, he’s going to need to take a scalp from the likes of Cotto, and then maybe Andy Lee, the WBO middleweight champion. Golovkin can’t count on getting fights against Peter Quillin or Daniel Jacobs, because those are not fights that are doable. Quillin is reportedly interested in facing Golovkin in the future, but he sees it as a fight that will bring in a lot of money, and that’s just not likely going to be the case.

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Golovkin’s best bet for good money fights is the winner or the loser of Cotto-Canelo, and then guys like Chris Eubank Jr., Andre Ward, James DeGale, and George Groves. Golovkin might not be eager to fight super middleweights, but he’s really going to have to if he wants to get the bigger money.



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