By Scott Gilfoid: Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya says he made an offer to unbeaten IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) over 30 days ago for a fight against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (48-1-1, 34 KOs), but he never heard back from the Kazakhstan fighter. De La Hoya doesn’t say how much the offer was for GGG, but Canelo revealed last Saturday night after his 9th round knockout win over WBO junior middleweight champion Liam “Beefy” Smith (23-1-1, 13 KOs) that the offer was for over twice the amount that Golovkin had ever received for a fight in his career.
I believe that Golovkin’s biggest payday thus far is $2 million. If he’s now being offered $4 million for a fight that could bring in a huge amount of money, then that doesn’t sound like a great deal, does it? Canelo gets a tremendous payday of possibly $20 million or higher and Golovkin perhaps little more than $4 million.
”30 days ago I made an offer to GGG and his team and I have never heard back,” said De La Hoya last night. ”I want to make this fight. The bottom line is Canelo isn’t afraid of no one. They [Canelo and Golovkin] will fight in September and he [Canelo] is coming back to fight in December. All we need is for GGG and his team to return the call. Sign the contract and let’s stop this nonsense.”
Well, the fact that Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler isn’t returning a phone call to De La Hoya after he supposedly gave him an offer for a fight against Canelo suggests to me that he doesn’t see it as a good offer. De La Hoya needs to understand that he’s probably going to need to sweeten the offer, because I don’t think Team Golovkin is going to help Canelo get a career high payday without them being able to share the money.
Without Golovkin, Canelo has no options to make that kind of money. De La Hoya can trot out the aging Miguel Cotto for a second fight against Canelo if he wants to in 2017, but the money that fight makes won’t be comparable to the money that Golovkin vs. Canelo can bring. There’s no one else in boxing that can bring in the kind of money that Golovkin can for Canelo unless Floyd Mayweather Jr. comes out of retirement to fight him again, and it doesn’t look he’s going to do that. Besides Golovkin, Canelo’s only real option in the future for a huge payday would be if he fought a light heavyweight like Sergey Kovalev or Andre Ward. Don’t laugh.
Canelo looked like he was in the 170s in terms of weight last night, and the light heavyweight division is at 175. Canelo usually has a weight advantage over his opponents. If he faces Kovalev or Ward, it would be the first time in Canelo’s career where he’s giving the weight advantage to his opponent. Kovalev is probably no more than 10 to 15 pounds heavier than Canelo on fight night, so it’s not like it would be a huge disadvantage. It would be the equivalent of the weight differene we saw in Canelo’s previous fight against welterweight Amir Khan. In this case, Canelo would be Khan. Obviously, Canelo is not going to risk his hide by facing Kovalev, which is why his promoter De La Hoya needs to give Golovkin and his promoter Loeffler a fair deal in splitting up the money for the fight between them.
The money pot for a Canelo-Golovkin fight could wind up being $100 million. If all Golovkin is going to get is $4 million, then that doesn’t exactly seem like a great deal for him. If he’s not going to be able to share equally with the loot from the fight, then it’s not even worth taking the fight. Golovkin should focus on fighting guys where he can get a better cut of the money, even if it means less money. The thing is with Golovkin, he might not ever get a big fight like this again, especially if he whips Canelo badly. I think Golovkin will be avoided like the plague if he beats Canelo. That’s why it’s important that he get a fair deal of at least a 55-45 split of the revenue. Anything less than that, I don’t see it as worth it for him and Loeffler to agree to the deal. If the fight is going to make $100 million, then Golovkin should get at least $45 million, not $4 million. I’m just saying.
Canelo knocked out a hapless Liam Smith last Saturday night in nine sickeningly one-sided rounds at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The fight was televised on HBO pay-per-view. Smith was dropped three times before the massacre was finally over. At no time did Smith look like he had a chance to win the fight. Smith talked before the fight how he was going to throw nonstop punches to force a fast pace for the Canelo fight. What we saw instead was Smith fighting at a measured pace, standing around doing nothing much of the time, and letting Canelo have plenty of rest breaks.