By Jeff Aranow: It seems that Gennady Golovkin and his promoters at K2 made a mistake by letting WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez take a voluntary defense of his WBC title against Amir Khan rather than forcing a title shot against him. Golovkin was supposed to have fought for the WBC title against the previous champion Miguel Cotto last year.
Instead, Golovkin let Cotto fight Canelo in a big money fight last November. Canelo is now the WBC champion and is sounding unconcerned about potentially losing his WBC title if he elects not to fight Golovkin later this year.
Golovkin and Canelo have an agreement that Canelo is supposed to fight him after he gets his voluntary defense out of the way against Amir Khan on May 7. Judging by Canelo and his promoters at Golden Boy Promotions, it doesn’t look like they plan on fighting Triple G.
“I’m not even thinking about that,” Alvarez said this week. “After the fight, we’ll see. We’ll decide and see what’s the best course of action. But right now, it’s not even in my mind. Hasn’t even crossed my mind. I don’t know.”
The reason why Canelo can be cavalier about the WBC title is because he doesn’t need it for him to get big money fights. The WBC title is little more than adornment for Canelo, and not even necessary.
If Canelo gives up the WBC title, he can go forward and fight the likes of Manny Pacquiao, Tim Bradley, Danny Garcia, Adrien Broner or Kell Brook for his next fight later this year. David Lemieux, who also fights for Golden Boy, is a name that is being brought up as a potential opponent for Canelo if a fight against Pacquiao doesn’t happen. It’s not likely that Canelo will fight any of the other middleweights in the division because they’re either too dangerous or not popular enough for it to be worthwhile.
Golovkin will likely need to fall back on his Plan-B opponent Billy Joe Saunders if his promoter Tom Loeffler of K2 Promotions can get him a fight against him. If not, then Plan-C is Golovkin moving up to super middleweight to take on WBO champion Gilberto Ramirez. Top Rank promoter Bob Arum would really like to make that fight because it’s a win-win match-up for him and Ramirez. It’ll help turn Ramirez into a star even if he loses to Golovkin, which is no forgone conclusion due to the size advantage Ramirez would have over him.
Golden Boy CEO Oscar De La Hoya and Vice president Eric Gomez both are saying that a fight between Canelo and Golovkin will take place eventually. However, neither of them are saying when the fight will take place. By the way they’re talking, it would appear that the fight will take place in the future at some point.
It’s possible that it won’t happen until Canelo has exhausted all the potential big money fights he can get, and is in serious need of a mega-fight opponent like Golovkin. By that point, Golovkin may be old enough for Canelo to beat him without too many problems. Part of the strategy golden Boy is using in making Golovkin wait to get a crack at Canelo is to let the fight marinate so that it’ll be bigger in the future. The other part would appear to be a strategy of waiting Golovkin out until he’s older and has lost some of his skills. It’s the same strategy that we saw in the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao match-making. Mayweather didn’t elect to fight Pacquiao until he’d been knocked out by Juan Manuel Marquez and was no longer looking like the same dangerous fighter he’d been previously.