By Allan Fox: Gennady Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler of K2 Promotions is reporting that they’ve sold out Madison Square Garden MSG in New York for this Saturday night in Golovkin’s unification fight against IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux.
It was thought by a lot of boxing fans that the tickets were already sold out a long time ago, but surprisingly it took until two days before the fight before the last remaining tickets were finally sold out completely.
Despite it taking a long time to finally sell out the Garden, it’s still impressive that they were able to sell it out because neither of the fighters in the main event are from the New York area or from the United States. Golovkin is from Kazakhstan and Lemieux is from Canada. It just shows you how the two of them have been able to win over a lot of boxing fans in their fights on cable.
The Golovkin-Lemieux fight will be televised on HBO PPV on Saturday. The fight is selling for $49.99, which is a lot of money for some people given that they’re already recently plunked down $100 to see the Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr fight last May. Next month on November 21st, boxing fans will be asked to pay to see the Saul “Canelo” Alvarez vs. Miguel Cotto fight on HBO PPV. If you’re normal cable bill is $150, like a lot of people in the U.S, you’re going to be paying $200 in consecutive months.
“We just got word from Madison Square Garden this morning that every ticket is sold out at the box office for this fantastic night of boxing on October 17,” Loeffler said. “With four fights on the HBO Pay-Per-View telecast including three undercard fights, you have a fantastic broadcast worth the cost. This undercard has great international flavor, for fighters from Kazakhstan, Canada, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bahamas, Ireland, Argentina and other places to come to New York and sell out Madison Square Garden without a local favorite. These quality matchups that include the undercard are the reason fans responded.”
The undercard for the Golovkin-Lemieux fight card has three good to decent fights. They are as follows:
Roman Gonzalez vs. Brian Viloria
Luis Ortiz vs. Matias Ariel Vidondo
Tureano Johnson vs. Eamonn O’Kane
The Gonzalez-Viloria fight is arguably better than the main event. Gonzalez is unbeaten at 43-0, 37 KOs, and he’s facing one of the best fighters in the flyweight division in 34-year-old Viloria.
I rate Viloria as maybe the 6th or 7th best fighter in the division. He was beaten by Juan Francisco Estrada two years ago, which kind of takes away from of the interest in this fight for me. I’d rather see a rematch between Gonzalez and Estrada then to see a fighter that Estrada defeated face Gonzalez. Viloria will be kncoekd out by Gonzalez.
The Ortiz-Vidondo fight is a mismatch. The unbeaten heavyweight Ortiz is much better than Vidondo, and it’s too bad they couldn’t get a better opponent for him to fight. Ortiz wins this fight easy.
Tureano Johnson vs. O’Kane is an IBF middleweight eliminator. This means that the winner of the Golovkin vs. Lemieux fight will soon be facing the Johnson-O’Kane winner in a mandatory title defense. Look for Johnson to defeat O’Kane.
Here are the rest of the fights on the card:
Ghislain Maduma vs. Maurice Hooker
Lamont Roach Jr vs. Jose Bustos
Ruslan Madiev vs. Azriel Paez
Comments are closed.