By Dan Ambrose: IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs) and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs) are both in a tough situation as far as their fights go.
Neither guy has an opponent for their next fights, and the landscape looks bleak for both in terms of finding quality opponents that the boxing public cares about. Canelo needs a fairly big name for his May 7 fight on HBO pay-per-view, because he can’t choose just anyone if he’s going to be asking the boxing public to pay big money to see him fight.
Canelo can’t go back to Alfredo Angulo or Erislandy Lara again and expect the fans to see these less than entertaining fights like they did before. The names that Golden Boy Promotions is reportedly considering – Willie Monroe Jr., Gabriel Rosado, Vanes Martirosyan and Liam Smith – are not pay-per-view worthy names.
Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler would like to have the Golovkin-Canelo fight moved ahead to May rather than September due to the lack of opponents for the two stars.
“GGG and Canelo fighting in May would make a lot of sense, but it would be up to the Canelo/Golden Boy side to do it,” Loeffler said to ESPN.com.
It sounds like a smart plan by Loeffler. If neither of these guys have anyone good enough to fight next, then they need to forget about putting their fight off until September and instead face each other right now in May.
The World Boxing Council recently gave Canelo’s the option of slipping in a voluntary defense before facing Golovkin later this year. The WBC did this because they wanted to allow Canelo and Golden Boy a little more time to supposedly let the Canelo-Golovkin fight build to make it a bigger fight. However, with neither of these fighters having quality opponents to face in their next fights, then it’s going to be impossible to make their fight bigger.
You can’t make a fight bigger by beating up on little known weak opposition. If Golden Boy drags out another out of shape fighter that is pooled from the inactive list like they did in finding ring rusty fighters James Kirkland and Alfredo Angulo for Canelo to showcase against, it’s not going to help make his fight against Golovkin bigger.
The only way Golden Boy can make the fight bigger is to risk Canelo’s neck by putting him in with someone difficult to beat like Jermall Charlo, Demetrius Andrade, Andy Lee or Jermell Charlo.
If it weighs 160 lbs… I'll fight it
— Gennady Golovkin (@GGGBoxing) January 21, 2016
Golovkin’s potential opponent for his April fight Tureano Johnson suffered a shoulder injury, and reportedly will need surgery. A fight between him and Golovkin is out of the question. Further, Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler was unable to negotiate a unification fight against
WBO belt holder Billy Joe Saunders. That fight is out of the question. Golovkin’s chances of getting the other decent names in the division are pretty much zero. Guys like Daniel Jacobs, Billy Joe Saunders and Andy Lee likely won’t agree to fight Golovkin.
If Golovkin can’t get the fight against Canelo for May, then he’ll likely be stuck fighting someone like Dmitry Chudinov, Arif Magomedov, Antoine Douglas or Caleb Truax.
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