By Dan Ambrose: As expected, the World Boxing Council has decided to let their champion WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs) take a voluntary defense of his newly won WBC 160lb title rather than forcing him to defend it against his mandatory challenger Gennady Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs), who has already been waiting for his guaranteed shot at the WBC title for many months now.
The WBC made the decision today to let the 25-year-old Canelo to take a voluntary defense by the end of May 2016. At that point, the WBC will order a 15-day negotiation period between Canelo and Golovkin. If the two fighters don’t agree to a fight, then a purse bid will be ordered by the WBC.
If Canelo or Golovkin can’t take the fight at that point, then one of them will be named as the WBC undisputed middleweight champion. So in other words, if Canelo doesn’t make a deal with Golovkin or decides not to go through with the fight after a purse bid, then Golovkin will become the WBC middleweight title without throwing a blow.
There’s nothing in the WBC’s statement that guarantees that Golovkin will get his shot at Canelo after his voluntary defense of his WBC title. It’ll be up to Canelo whether he wants to face Golovkin after his voluntary defense. So in other words, the WBC basically just gave Canelo a free fight to take without the guarantee that he’ll ever fight Golovkin. The WBC middleweight title would then be a prop for Canelo for his next fight, a prop that he could potentially do away with when forced to defend his title against Golovkin in his next fight.
Here’s the WBC’s statement in part:
“Both Alvarez and Glolovkin shall be entitled to make a voluntary defense of their corresponding championships, so as to maximize the interest on their highly anticipated showdown. A 15-day free negotiation period will be ordered on the earlier of the completion of the voluntary defense or May 31 2016. If there is no agreement a purse bid will be conducted under the WBC rules and regulations. If after their corresponding voluntary defenses one boxer is unable to fight the other for the undisputed WBC Middleweight Championship of the world, the unable fighter will lose his status as champion or interim champion. The fighter able to fight will be named undisputed WBC World Champion.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuSTvDjB38o
This works out really well for the 25-year-old Canelo and works terribly for Golovkin. The catch-weight issue will still be there when the two fighters start negotiating after Canelo’s voluntary defense in May of 2016. If Canelo decides he still wants the 155lb catch-weight handicap like before, then Golovkin will be in a situation where he’ll either need to agree to it or say no and hope the WBC does their job by kindly telling Canelo that he cannot force a mandatory challenger to fight him at a catch-weight. He can only do this when making voluntary defenses against challengers that he’s throwing a bone to.
Of course, the WBC could have a meeting if they wanted to change their own rules by saying that all of their champions can force all of their challengers to fight at whatever catch-weight that they please. I can see that happening if Canelo says he’s going to vacate his WBC middleweight title because Golovkin won’t agree to give him a handicap by fighting him at 155lbs. I would hope that the WBC won’t change their rules to allow that kind of thing, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.
I think the eventual negotiations between Canelo and Golovkin will likely result in the two fighters butting heads over the catch-weight deal. I think Golovkin would agree with the money part, but I don’t think he wants to give Canelo an advantage in weight by draining down to fight him at 155lb, and then wind up weakened by the process.
Canelo is younger than the 33-year-old Golovkin, and it seems like younger fighters are better at dehydrating and rehydrating than older fighters. That’s my view. I see younger guys like Canelo that are good at dehydrating and rehydrating. I don’t know why he would need to fight Golovkin at a catch-weight, when he ultimately rehydrates to a higher weight than him. It would seem better for Canelo to simply weight in at 160, and then rehydrate to the 180s or whatever weight he rehydrates to nowadays, then for him to drain down to 155lbs, and then rehydrate to the 170s to 180s to potentially enjoy a small weight advantage over Golovkin.
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