By Allan Fox: While many fans are skeptical about whether the unification fight between WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (47-1-1, 33 KOs) and IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs) is a doable fight, World Boxing Council president Mauricio Sulaiman remains quietly confident that there will be a contract agreement between the two fighters. However, if that fails to happen, Sulaiman is ready to strip Canelo of his WBC title if he chooses to resist the idea of taking the fight. A purse bid is tentatively scheduled for a week from now on Tuesday, May 24, if the two sides haven’t reached an agreement by that time.
“I am completely confident the fight is going to happen,” Sulaiman said to the latimes.com earlier today. “Both fighters have made it clear they want it. The public, the fans and the press want it. It’s the right fight at the right time.”
One thing is clear; there will not be any additional interim fights before the Canelo-Golovkin fight takes place. There was a source that revealed that information to Fight News on Monday about a need for two to three more interim fights taking place before Canelo and Golovkin meet up.
Sulaiman and Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler are saying that the Canelo-Golovkin fight will be next rather than two or three fights down the line. This is good news for the fans is they won’t have to wait any longer for Canelo and Golovkin to face each other. The fans have waited long enough for this match-up. Letting a fight marinate for two years is ridiculous, especially when one of the fighters is 34 and not getting any younger. From Golovkin’s point of view, he’s more focused on the sport in winning titles rather than milking a fight to make it as big as possible. Golovkin wants to capture all the belts in the middleweight division, and he cannot do that if he’s waiting for Canelo and Golden Boy to stop marinating the fight so that he can fight for the WBC title.
It would be nice if K2 Promotions and Golden Boy are able to come to an agreement in the contract talks before the scheduled purse bid on 5/24, because it would make things easier. However, we don’t know what the sticking points are for the two promotional sides. It could be anything. Money is obviously important. Canelo stands to make a lot of money for this fight, and it could be the biggest payday of his career. He won’t need to give Golovkin the same percentage split of the revenue as he has in his two biggest fights of his career against Miguel Cotto and Floyd Mayweather Jr. Those were established PPV fighters that Canelo fought in the past. They both brought a lot to the table in terms of experience in PPV fights.
Golovkin doesn’t have that going for him. His only PPV fight up until now was last October in his fight against IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux on HBO PPV. The expectations were low for Golovkin and Lemieux, but the PPV results were even lower than many boxing fans thought they would be with the fight generating a little over 100,000 PPV buys. That was bad for Golovkin because he needed good PPV numbers in order to make an argument that he rates a sizable split of the revenue for a fight against Canelo.
The way things are now, Golovkin will need to take pretty much whatever he can get for the Canelo fight. If it does to a purse bid, Golovkin could wind up with a very low split. Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya of Golden Boy said several months ago that a 90-10 purse split in favor of Canelo would be the starting point for the negotiations with Golovkin. While some boxing fans thought De La Hoya was joking at the time, you have to believe that he was dead serious. There is a huge difference in the two fighters’ fan base and ability to pull in the fans right now, and Canelo is in the driver’s seat right now to ask for whatever he wants.
If Golovkin decides to make a fuss about it, Canelo can always vacate his WBC title, because it doesn’t mean nearly as much to him and his fans that he keeps the title. Canelo has a huge fan base that will continue to support him whether he’s the WBC middleweight champion or not. It’s Golovkin who is in need of the WBC title and other belts in order for him to look more credible to the casual boxing fans to win them over. Golovkin can’t count on him picking up a lot of fans by beating no names like Dominic Wade, Willie Monroe Jr. and Martin Murray.
Golovkin needs titles and a lot of them for him to take his career to the next level. If Golovkin and K2 Promotions decide to play hardball by not agreeing to the purse split offered to them by Golden Boy, then Canelo can easily give up his WBC title and go in another direction. It’s the same thing with the catch-weight. If Golovkin doesn’t agree to the catch-weight that Canelo asks for, he could wind up not getting the fight with him. Canelo would give up the WBC title without a fight, and that would prevent Golovkin from winning the belt inside the ring, which is where he needs to win it for him to pick up more fans. He can’t be just bequeathed the WBC title without a battle because then the title would be next to worthless for Golovkin.
“I can tell you that any reports … that there are interim fights being discussed is completely false,” Loeffler said to the latimes.com. “We have made it clear to Golden Boy and the WBC that there would be no interim fights or extensions to the purse bid. … Canelo got one interim fight. Now he needs to fight Triple G.”
This is just one small issue. Loeffler can certainly dig his heels into the ground and refuse anymore interim fights, but if he tries to do something similar with the catch-weight and purse split that Canelo and Golden Boyh wants for the fight, he could wind up sabotaging the negotiations. Canelo is the A-side, and he’s probably not going to let the B-side fighter Golovkin dictate terms for the negotiations.