Stephen Espinoza: Canelo vs Golovkin in 2017; it’s just a “Hot Towel”

By Boxing News - 07/01/2016 - Comments

espinoza

By Reynaldo Sanchez: Stephen Espinoza, SHOWTIME executive Vice President, is not convinced that the Saul “Canelo” Alvarez – Gennady “GGG” Golovkin fight, will take place in September 2017. Espinoza believes that this announcement it is just a hot towel to calm the wave of criticism being targeted towards Canelo and Golden Boy Promotions.

Espinoza is not sure this fight will ever happen and his opinion is that Golden Boy Promotions made this announcement because they were practically forced by the criticism that arose in social networks, after Canelo Alvarez left the WBC belt to avoid a fight with his mandatory challenger Gennady Golovkin.

“The fans have been up in arms, taking to the social networks to voice their displeasure since Canelo’s decision to hold off on the fight,” said Espinoza to Sway. Espinoza believes the statement – regarding Canelo-Golovkin taking place in the fall of 2017 – was issued in order to calm down the angry crowd” Espinoza said.

“My take on it, and I don’t know for sure, they sort of said it was going to happen this fall- and it didn’t happen this fall. They are getting killed for it, so they said let’s put something out to stop the bleeding – ‘okay we’ll do it next fall. Whether or not it happens we’ll see, but I think they threw something out to stop the bleeding and said let’s put our finger in the wall before the entire [wall] breaks and everyone murders us for not giving the fight that we promised to deliver” Espinoza told Sway.

From our perspective, we have some doubts. First it off, we notice that there is a huge inconsistency, just the fact that Canelo’s team said that they needed a few fights in the middleweight division for Canelo to adapt his body and then suddenly announcing he is taking on Liam Smith at 154 is something that have us wondering if Canelo’s team really want to fight Triple G in a near future.

Canelo vs. Liam Smith is a championship fight and if Canelo captures the WBO 154lb title, he’ll have to defend it. Therefore, we don’t understand how a fight at super welter will prepare Canelo for a future fight against Gennady Golovkin.

Also there is always the possibility that Triple G will achieve his last goal, which is to win the WBO middleweight title belt (owned by BJ Saunders) very soon and it will make more difficult to see Golovkin/Canelo in a near future. If Canelo beats Smith, he might stay at 154 and we understand that the Kazakh would have eventually to jump to the 168 division to look for new challenges.

We do agreed with everything that Espinoza said because at the end of the day if Canelo beats Smith, he will be a champion once again and most likely the fans will forget what ever happened with Canelo/Gennady. Let’s be honest; people, specially the boxing fans, sometimes have short memory and besides Golden Boy Promotions is already playing their cards with the rumor that after the Canelo/Smith fight, there won’t be a PPV event for Canelo’s next fight in December, meaning that this will be a great strategy to calm down all the criticism.