By Allan Fox: In a sign that Floyd Mayweather Jr. may need to come up with a riskier opponent than Manny Pacquiao if he chooses to stage a comeback, boxing fan said they prefer to see Gennady Golovkin face WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez rather than a second fight between Manny Pacquiao and Mayweather in a poll by ESPN.
83% of the fans picked the Golovkin vs. Canelo fight compared to just 10% for the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao 2 fight, 7% of the fans picked Sergey Kovalev vs. Andre Ward as the fight they wanted to see. 21,946 fans voted in the last day, according to Dan Rafael.
This is obviously a good thing for the Golovkin-Canelo fight, because it suggests that this is by far the biggest fight in boxing right now. For Mayweather, it suggests that he’s probably not going to be attracting much interest if he comes back and says he wants to fight Pacquiao a second time, or if he picks out WBC welterweight champion Danny Garcia.
Mayweather said over the weekend that he wants $100 million to come back to the sport for a fight. Unless one of the networks are fine with taking a colossal loss in Paying Mayweather $100 million to see him fight Danny Garcia or Pacquiao in that would likely bring in only a fraction of that amount, it doesn’t look too probable that Mayweather is going to be able to get the payday he wants.
I’m sure Mayweather won’t cry if the networks don’t call him and wave $100 million under his nose to lure him back, because he already made a tremendous amount of money in his six-fight contract with Showtime, which only included two good fights against Pacquiao and Canelo. The other four fights were throwaway mismatches against Robert Guerrero, two against Marcos Maidana, and a final one against Andre Berto.
Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler is working on trying to put the fight together with Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy. We’ll know soon whether the fight can get made.
Canelo and Golovkin have 15 days to negotiate the fight. If they do not reach an agreement in that time, then it’ll go to a purse bid. If Canelo and Golden Boy choose not to take the fight, as many boxing fans suspect will happen, then Canelo will very likely face Miguel Cotto next in November in a rematch.
“Let’s give the fans what they want,” said Golovkin on his Twitter. “Let’s not wait anymore.”
“I’m not in this sport because I’m afraid. I’m willing to fight anybody!” said Canelo on his Twitter.
“He says he’ll fight at 160 (pounds) which is what we’ve been saying all along,” said Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler to Las Vegas Review Journal. “But we have to get that in writing from Canelo and that is where everything begins and ends. Gennady is not going to fight him at less than 160.”
Loeffler has already spoken to Golden Boy’s CEO Oscar De La Hoya last Sunday, and the two plan on talking more on Tuesday.