By Chris Williams: K2 Promotions and Gennady Golovkin may be without one of their biggest drawing fighters in WBC flyweight champion Roman Gonzalez (44-0, 38 KOs) after this Saturday’s fight card on HBO PPV from the Forum in Inglewood, California.
After appeared on two of Gonzalez’s previous fight cards, Gonzalez is ready to branch out and headline his own career. He’ll be fighting McWilliams Arroyo (16-2, 14 KOs) this Saturday on the Golovkin vs. Dominic Wade card, but the 28-year-old Gonzalez feels he’s ready to be his own main event and it’s quite understandable him wanting to do this. Gonzalez has picked up a big fan base in the United States recently, and yet he’s not making the big money that we normally see from fighters of his talent level.
Gonzalez is the Number one pound-for-pound fighter in the sport right now, and it just doesn’t look right having a fighter at that level fighting on undercards. I can’t recall ever seeing a top pound-for-pound fighter on the undercards. Gonzalez probably should have been a main event fighter one fight again when he fought Brian Viloria. I think that was a better fight than the Golovkin vs. David Lemieux fight in the main event last October at Madison Square Garden in New York. Maybe if Gonzalez-Viloria was the main event on that card, it would have generated a respectable amount of PPV buys on HBO.
“I believe that both fighters, Golovkin and myself, are both main events and I hope that after this fight they give me an opportunity to be my own main event,” said Gonzalez.
Hear, hear! I totally agree with Gonzalez. It’s time that he starts headlining his own cards because he’s helping Golovkin bring in big ratings without getting the same kind of cash.
Once Gonzalez moves to headline his own fight cards, he’ll get a nice bump up in pay for his fights. With Gonzalez off Golovkin’s cards, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a big drop in Golovkin’s amount of viewers to his fights. We could see that it was Gonzalez who was bringing in the viewers in Golovkin’s last two fights.
In response to a question about his purses not being high for a fighter ranked number 1, Gonzalez said “Yes, due to the fact of my weight class, the purses are not as high. I do believe that after this fight, where Arroyo and I will give such a great fight, that soon I will be receiving the purses that I deserve.”
Once Gonzalez is headlining his own cards, he should be making a lot more money than he’s making now, especially if he shows that he can bring in high ratings.
Gonzalez may need to move up a weight class or two to getting bigger fights. He’s already cleared out the flyweight division. He already beat Juan Francisco and Brian Viloria. Gonzalez needs to move up to super flyweight and face WBO champion Naoya Inoue, and then move up another three pounds to bantamweight to face the likes of Jamie McDonnell and Shinsuke Yamanaka. If Gonzalez could move up all the way to super bantamweight, then it would get ready interesting because he could face guys like Guillermo Rigondeaux, Scott Quigg, Nonito Donaire and Carl Frampton.