By Dan Ambrose: Boxing great Roy Jones Jr. thinks it makes a lot of sense for WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez to take the bigger money fights against guys like Manny Pacquiao than taking a dangerous fight against IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin. Jones doesn’t think the fight against Golovkin will bring in $50 million for Canelo like a fight against Pacquiao.
“I couldn’t milk the cow like Mayweather because I didn’t have the patience…same thing except there’s one x-factor…the x-factor for Canelo…I can make this $50 million and then fight Triple G,” said Jones to Fighthype.com.
Pacquiao is saying he’s retiring from the sport now that he’s beaten Tim Bradley from their fight last Saturday. Jones likely would have no problem in Canelo waiting to fight Golovkin until later one after he’s exhausted every potential big money fight available to him. If Golden Boy Promotions can’t lure Pacquiao to take the Canelo fight, then the only options for Canelo to make big paydays would be for him to face more welterweights. Canelo is fighting Amir Khan on May 7 on HBO PPV. If Canelo beats Khan, then Golden Boy could get some of the other welterweights like Danny Garcia, Shawn Porter, Kell Brook, Tim Bradley and Keith Thurman to move up to 155 and face Canelo at a catch-weight. Bradley would be the ideal opponent for Canelo if his promoter Bob Arum would give him the green light to take the fight.
Other potential big money fights available for Canelo would be against guys like Gilberto Ramirez and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. Those would bring in good money if a catch-weight could be agreed on. Chavez Jr. and Ramirez are both super middleweights, and they might not be able to move down to 164 to fight Canelo. At the same time, Canelo probably won’t agree to fight them at 164 because he wouldn’t have a size advantage.
Canelo and Golden Boy Promotions probably don’t need Jones to give them ducking tips to avoid the Golovkin fight, because I think they’ll do fine without his two cents. We’re already hearing Canelo talk about how the fight against Golovkin has to take place at a catch-weight of 155lbs. If Golovkin doesn’t give in to the heavier Canelo’s catch-weight requirements, then we’re probably not going to get a fight between them. Golovkin will still get the WBC title that Canelo has in his possession right now because Canelo can’t force his mandatory challengers to agree to catch-weights, at least not yet. If the WBC votes that into a new rule, then Canelo can force catch-weights against all of his challengers to his WBC 160lb title, but I don’t see the WBC doing that. It would be too controversial of a move if they did that.
Golovkin will probably need to be satisfied with getting whatever fights he can until some point in the future when Canelo can no longer make his own catch-weight of 155. Once Canelo can only fight at 160 like normal middleweights, then Golovkin might have a chance of getting a fight against him unless he has some other hoop he needs to jump through in order to get the fight.
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