(Photo credit: World Boxing Council) By Dan Ambrose: Unless we see WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs) pulling the nuclear option of vacating his title, we’ll be seeing a big mega-fight between him and interim WBC middleweight champ Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs) in the second half of 2016. This has been confirmed by a representative from Golovkin’s team. Vacating his WBC title won’t hurt Canelo, because he has a ton of casual boxing fans that wouldn’t be too bothered by him giving up the belt. They just want to see him fight and win. Any title that Canelo might have is secondary and less important.
They met with the World Boxing Council president Mauricio Sulaiman last Monday and he got an agreement from the two fighter’s promoters Tom Loeffler of K2 Promotions and Eric Gomez of Golden Boy Promotions that the fighters would both take voluntary fights in the first quarter of next year before facing each other in late 2016, likely in September.
“The fight will most likely take place second half of 2016. Both will have fights in early 2016 and then fight each other in the second half of the year,” said a representative of Team Golovkin to TMZ.com.
The decision to take a voluntary fight before the mega-fight likely was initiated by Canelo’s team, because Golovkin has been chomping at the bit to get a hole of Canelo and take his WBC title from him to show who the better fighter is between the two of them. There have been no feet dragging on Golovkin’s part for that fight. He’s made it picture clear for some time now that he wanted to get the golden-haired Canelo into the ring so that he could beat him, take his strap, and move on to the next target, which in this case is WBO middleweight champion Andy Lee.
A voluntary defense will give Canelo a chance to milk his WBC 160lb title for an extra defense before he faces Golovkin and likely loses his title by a knockout. Taking a voluntary defense might also be Canelo and Golden Boy’s way of testing the waters by seeing how much money can be made in fighting someone like Amir Khan or Tim Bradley, both of which have been mentioned as possible opponents for the 25-year-old Canelo.
If Canelo can make big money fighting those guys, then you would have to assume that it would make the decision easier to potentially choose the nuclear option of vacating his WBC middleweight title if Golovkin doesn’t agree to a strength draining 155lb catch-weight for their mega-fight. It’s quite possible that Canelo will insist on the 155lb catch-weight against Golovkin in order to gain a big weight advantage over him.
Golovkin is no expert at draining down in weight to fight at the near junior middleweight division, as he’s not had to do such things in the past for his fights. Canelo seems to have a real knack for this kind of thing, which clearly gives him an advantage in it. Canelo is younger than Golovkin by eight years and losing and putting on huge amounts of weight doesn’t seem to bother Canelo. If Golovkin says no to the 155lb catch-weight handicap, then Canelo can always use that as an excuse not to make the fight happen.
If the WBC backs Canelo and says that Golovkin failed to go along with the program by agreeing to the catch-weight of his choice, then Golovkin will lose his turn for his title shot. Canelo could then move on and defend his WBC title against whoever he pleases. If the WBC backs Golovkin by saying that Canelo can’t force a catch-weight of any kind on a mandatory challenger like Golovkin, then we’ll see whether Canelo will choose the nuclear option of vacating his WBC title rather than facing Golovkin at the full weight of 160lbs for the fight.
I wish I could say for sure that Canelo will agree to fight Golovkin at 160, but I have a feeling that he won’t I believe that Canelo will stubbornly insist on the 155lb catch-weight, and if Golovkin doesn’t give in or if the WBC doesn’t rubber stamp his wishes for that weight, then I see Canelo opting to vacate the title. Golovkin is in a pretty bad position right now, because he’s the one that badly wants the Canelo fight.
I don’t think the feeling is mutual unfortunately. I believe that Canelo is ambivalent about the fight. He can make big money fighting smaller guys indefinitely like Bradley, Khan and whichever other welterweights that Golden Boy promoter Oscar De La Hoya can lure up to the middleweight division to fight Canelo at 155.
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