(Photo Credit: Hogan Photos/Golden Boy Promotions) By Dan Ambrose: WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez says IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin is going to need to start facing better opposition if he wants to get a fight against him.
Canelo wasn’t impressed with Golovkin’s last opponent Dominic Wade, who he knocked out in two rounds last month in a mandatory title defense for his IBF belt. Canelo says that Golovkin will need to upgrade his competition from the likes of Wade if he wants to fight him in the future.
This is the closest that Canelo has come to say that he won’t be fighting Golovkin next after Canelo’s fight against welterweight Amir Khan on Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Canelo was supposed to be fighting Khan in a voluntary defense before fighting his mandatory challenger Golovkin in his next fight. But it looks like Canelo is going to skip out on the WBC’s requirement that he fight Golovkin next, which means Canelo will be giving up his WBC belt rather than fighting Golovkin.
“Fighting the type of opponents [Golovkin] fought a couple weeks ago, come on, that’s not going to bring this fight,” Alvarez said to the latimes.com. “He needs to work his way up, he needs to earn his shot. He would have to fight somebody … who has skill, somebody that brings it. Yes, he has all these knockouts, but who has he fought? There’s no reason to be afraid,” said Alvarez.
I guess Golovkin will need to start cleaning out the welterweight division like Canelo is doing if wants to get a fight against him. Seriously, if Golovkin were fighting Amir Khan right now, he would be getting skewered by the boxing media.
If Golovkin is going to have to earn a fight against Canelo rather than getting the fight based on him being seen as the best fighter in the division, then it’s going to put him in an impossible situation. It’s impossible because Golovkin cannot get the top fighters to face him. WBA champion Daniel Jacobs and WBO champ Billy Joe Saunders haven’t been willing to share the ring with him, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to change.
Saunders talks about wanting to fight Golovkin, but then he sets up conditions for it to happen by saying it must take place in the UK. If Golovkin can’t get any of the top fighters to face him due to him being seen as too dangerous, then it lets Canelo off the hook indefinitely. He can simply ignore Golovkin for the remainder of the career because he’s not fighting guys that he approves of.
What Canelo isn’t pointing out is that he’s been able to get top fighters like Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Miguel Cotto to fight him is because he has a huge built in fan base in the United States. Golovkin doesn’t have the same situation. Golovkin’s home country of Kazakhstan is thousands of miles away, not next door to the U.S.
Golovkin can’t count millions of his fans from Kazakhstan to watch him on television in the U,S or pay to see him fight on HBO PPV. Golovkin has to win fans the old fashioned way by knocking out opponents and looking good. Golovkin’s job is made tougher by the fact that his promoters at K2 Promotions haven’t had an easy time getting the top names to fight him. They’ve had no luck in getting Cotto, Canelo or Mayweather to fight him.
Canelo doesn’t fight guys that always have great resumes of opposition, so it’s kind of disingenuous for him to be taking shots at Golovkin and saying he needs to improve the level of his competition if he wants to fight him. Look at the guys that Canelo has fought recently – Alfredo Angulo and James Kirkland. Those guys didn’t have a lot of big names on their resumes and he still fought them.