(Photo credit: Naoki Fakuda) By Allan Fox: Tom Loeffler of K2 Promotions says that over 6,000 tickets were sold on the first day that they went on sale for the April 23 fight between IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs) and challenger Dominic Wade (18-0, 12 KOs) for their fight at the Forum in Inglewood, California.
Loeffler, the promoter for Golovkin, expects the fight to be a sellout. The Forum has a seating capacity of 17,505. That would be a real show of Golovkin’s ability to sell tickets if the fight turns out to be a sellout.
Golovkin’s last fight against David Lemieux was also a sellout at Madison Square Garden in New York. If Golovkin can sellout fights on both sides of the U.S, it would show how popular he’s become.
What Golovkin needs to accomplish next is for him to become a pay-per-view attraction. His fight against Lemieux was said to have brought in roughly 100,000 pay-per-view buys on HBO. Those are not good numbers in comparison to fighters like WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, who recently brought in 900,000 PPV buys for his fight against Miguel Cotto last November. For Golovkin to be able to get the bigger names to fight him, he’s going to need to show that he can bring in a lot of PPV buys. If he can’t do that, then he’s likely going to need to be contest with fighting guys like Wade, Martin Murray, Willie Monroe Jr. and Daniel Geale.
Golovkin is the major pulling attraction with his fight against Wade. This isn’t a match-up where Golovkin is going to be getting help with ticket sales from Wade, because he’s pretty much an unknown in terms of being known by casual boxing fans. Wade is known by the hardcore boxing fans only. He’s a replacement opponent for Tureano Johnson, the IBF’s previous #1 contender, who suffered a shoulder injury while training recently.
You would also have to give WBC flyweight champion Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez (44-0, 38 KOs) some credit because a lot of boxing fans will be purchasing tickets to see him fight in the co-feature bout against #9 WBC McWilliams Arroyo (16-2, 14 KOs). “Chocolatito” is the flyweight division’s version of Golovkin.
The negative thing about this fight card is the fact that both fights at the top of the card are considered mismatches in the eyes of many boxing fans. The 25-year-old Wade has little chance of pulling off an upset against Golovkin. Indeed, this is considered to be more of a mismatch than Golovkin’s last fight against former IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux last October.
Wade has little power, he’s easy to hit, and he’s not even been dominating the weak opposition he’s faced to get this title shot. Gonzalez’s opponent Arroyo, 30, was recently beaten by IBF flyweight champion Amnat Ruenroeng in September 2014. Arroyo never avenged the loss and he’s fought only once since that defeat in beating Victor Ruiz by a 4th round knockout last April.
“I’m happy to be fighting McWilliams, a great boxer, and honored to be fighting on a Golovkin card,” said Gonzalez via fightnews.com.
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