By Patrick McHugh: WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (47-1-1, 33 KOs) did what everyone expected him to on Saturday night in stopping Amir Khan (31-4, 19 KOs) in the 6th round to retain his WBC middleweight title at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Khan fought bravely for five rounds until getting countered with a scorching right hand from Canelo after throwing a slow left hand. Khan went down like a rock on the canvas and was laid out for a considerable amount of time before they could get him up.
The immediate question that emerged in the aftermath of the fight was whether he 25-year-old Canelo will face his WBC mandatory challenger or no. More specifically, the question was whether Canelo would agree to fight Golovkin at the full weight of 160lbs for the division, because Golovkin said last Saturday that he’s an “old school” fighter and he doesn’t believe in fighting at catch-weights. He had agreed to come down to 154 to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. in the past, but that wasn’t a catch-weight.
Golovkin would have fought Mayweather at junior middleweight. Canelo said last night that he would fight Golovkin at 160 if the question were left up to him, but he has a team that decides these things. In other words, it looks as if Canelo will be deferring to what his management wants him to do rather than taking charge of the situation and making the decision himself like he’d done in the past when he overruled the advice from his promoters to fight Erislandy Lara and Austin Trout by facing them.
“For me (the weight) is no issue,” Canelo said via ringtv.com. “I have a team. Obviously we’ll get together. For me, I’ll fight him at 160. But I have a team. We already talked a little at my house. We’ll discuss it. We’re willing to make him an offer. I’m happy not just to fight him but beat him,” Canelo said.
When Canelo says they’re willing to “make him an offer,” this suggests that they’re going to offer Golovkin at catch-weight offer. If he doesn’t take the offer, which will likely be the case, then we won’t have a fight.
What’s troubling about all this is that Canelo and Golden Boy reportedly have an agreement already in place to fight a rematch against Miguel Cotto in November. This was reported last night by Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports.
If Canelo and Golden Boy already have an agreement for a rematch against the 35-year-old Cotto, then this means that the offer that Canelo and Golden Boy could be giving Golovkin is a take it leave it offer of 155lbs or nothing. They obviously know that Golovkin won’t agree to the 155lb catch-weight, because he doesn’t want to be weakened by a catch-weight for an important fight. You have to question whether Canelo and Golden Boy would be going through with a fight with Golovkin even if he accepted the catch-weight offer of 155lbs.
They could in theory then offer Golovkin such a small purse split for the fight that he would never agree to it. They could then tell the media they offered the fight to Golovkin and he didn’t agree to it.
“You heard Canelo after the fight calling out Golovkin,” De La Hoya. “He even wanted to fight in ring right now tonight. That’s the fight to make. And tomorrow I will make the call, I will start negotiating. I really hope that we can come to an agreement.”
De La Hoya is talking about how Canelo called Golovkin out in the ring after knocking Khan out. This is obviously was a well-planned move by Canelo and Golden Boy, because they needed to say something to the boxing fans and media about the Golovkin situation due to him being the WBC mandatory challenger. If they ignored him as a subject, it would have made Canelo look cowardly.
So it made sense for Canelo to call Golovkin out at that moment. However, if you read what Canelo said later about how if it were up to him, he would take the fight with Golovkin at 160, but his team is the one that decides. That tells you that Canelo is going to arguably hide behind his promoters Golden Boy in order not to take the fight with Golovkin, because they seem to be not interested in making that fight. The news of Golden Boy and Canelo already having an agreement with Miguel Cotto for a fight in November just makes this all look like a big charade with Canelo calling out Golovkin. It’s the old bait and switch.
Canelo gets the fans thinking he wants the Golovkin fight, and then instead he faces a guy he already beat before in the much smaller Cotto later this year in November in a rematch.