By Dan Ambrose: Unbeaten IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs) says he thinks Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (47-1-1, 33 KOs), who he sees as Golden Boy Promotions’ “Golden child” is afraid to fight him, and he thinks he’s not going to fight him in September of 2017 like he was led to believe.
Instead, Golovkin feels that Canelo will choose to give him a low-ball offer of $2 million for the fight. When Golovkin fails to agree to the offer, Canelo will tell say to the media that GGG didn’t accept the offer that was given to him.
Golovkin says that Canelo will then move on and fight someone like Antonio Margarito or Manny Pacquiao. Golovkin sees the fight against Canelo bring put off for another three more years, possibly as long as five more years. He sees Canelo making him wait a long, long time before he finally agrees to fight him.
The 34-year-old Golovkin doesn’t come out and say it directly, but it appears that he thinks Canelo is waiting him out until he gets old before he finally fights him. In three years, Golovkin will be 37, and he probably won’t be as good as he is now. If Canelo waits five years before agreeing to the fight, Golovkin will be almost 40, and clearly on his way down unless his incredible punching power is keeping him on top of the game.
If Golovkin doesn’t lose his power as he ages, he could very well still be at the top of his game even at 40.
Golovkin further says that he hurt Canelo with a body shot when the two of them were sparring several years ago. GGG totally sees Canelo’s management as scared of him losing badly, because it will cause the money that he’s bringing in for his fights to dry up. In other words, the Canelo gravy train will come to a screeching halt after he gets knocked out by Golovkin, as the boxing fans will stop purchasing his fights.
“The next step is for Canelo to say, ‘I’m ready. I’m size A, [Golovkin] is size B, and I’ll give him $2 million,’” Golovkin said to the latimes.com. “Then, [Alvarez] can say, ‘What? He won’t take that? He’s not ready? I’m ready.’ Everybody wants to watch this fight. He’s just scared.”
Like a lot of people, I have my doubts whether the Canelo-Golovkin fight will take place anytime soon. Canelo is making too much money with easy fights, and I don’t think he or Golden Boy wants to deal with the risk of a fight against Golovkin brings. It’s just a very dangerous fight for Canelo, and he could be embarrassed if he gets beaten too badly.
It would be a pity if Golovkin turns out to be correct with his belief that Canelo will price himself out by giving him a small money offer for the fight. Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya said earlier this year that if it’s up to him the negotiations between Golovkin and Canelo would start at a 90-10 split with his fighter Canelo getting the bigger cut of the revenue. Whether De La Hoya was serious or not is unclear.
10 percent is not a very generous cut of the revenue for Golovkin, but it might not be too far from what is eventually offered to him. I wouldn’t be surprised if the best offer Golovkin is given is 75-25 split of the revenue. Even that split might not be realistic, because Canelo and Golden Boy will be able to argue that they’ve brought in huge pay-per-view numbers in their fights against Floyd Mayweather Jr., and Miguel Cotto in the past. They can point out that Golovkin has fought on PPV just once in his fight against David Lemieux last year, and that fight brought in a rumored 100,000 buys on HBO. Golovkin and his promoter Tom Loeffler of K2 Promotions would have to decide if a lopsided purse split in favor of Canelo would be worth it to get the fight or not.
You can argue that Golovkin would be ripping off himself if he agreed to a small split of the revenue for a fight against Canelo, because his name would be used to help bring in a massive amount of PPV buys for the fight, but then he wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the fans that he brings in by getting a good cut of the revenue. Canelo would likely enjoy the major portion of the revenue while Golovkin would have to be satisfied with a smaller cut. If he’s given a take it or leave it offer from Canelo and Golden Boy to agree to the smaller money, then they’ll have to decide whether it’s worth it or not.
We’re going to see next year if Canelo is ready to take the fight with Golovkin, because it’s only one-year away. Canelo has exactly three more fights that he’ll be getting out of the way before next September. Canelo will be fighting on September 17 of this month against WBO junior middleweight champion Liam “Beefy” Smith, and then in December against the winner of the Willie Monroe Jr. vs. Gabriel Rosado or WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders. After those fights, Canelo will then be back in the ring on the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo in May 2017. If Canelo is still winning at that point, then he’s supposed to turn his attention to a fight against the unbeaten Golovkin for a mega-fight, or at least that’s what the plan is supposed to be according to Golden Boy Promotions.
“Canelo and [promoter] Golden Boy — everybody around Canelo — understands, and they’re all scared,” Golovkin said. “He’s their Golden Child. If he’s finished, no money from him, no business.”
I think a lot of boxing fans believe that Canelo and Golden Boy are scared of what could happen if Golovkin beats him. Right now, Canelo can make good money even fighting lesser guys like Liam Smith, Amir Khan, Alfredo Angulo and James Kirkland. I’m not sure if the fans will still be willing to purchase Canelo’s fights in the future once he gets beaten by Golovkin really bad. We saw Manny Pacquiao’s pay-per-view buys drop off after he was badly knocked out by Juan Manuel Marquez in 2012. However, it’s unclear whether the fans stopped purchasing Pacquiao’s fights in large numbers due to him being out of the ring for a year after his loss to Marquez. When Pacquiao did finally start fighting again, he was matched against guys that boxing fans didn’t want to see him fight like Brandon Rios, Chris Algieri and Tim Bradley. Fans didn’t want to see those fights, so it’s impossible to know if Pacquiao was hurt by the loss or by the poor match-making by his promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank.
Canelo has a large fan base of casual fans that will likely keep following him even if he loses to Golovkin. We saw how Canelo continued to be very popular even after his loss to Mayweather in 2013 and his controversial win over Erislandy Lara in 2014. Canelo clearly lost both of those fights in my view. He landed only 31 punches to the head of Lara for the entire 12 round fight. How do you win a fight by landing only 31 punches to the head?
Canelo’s fans didn’t give up on him after those fights, and I think they won’t give up on him if he loses to Golovkin. I think the fans like Canelo more for what he looks like than what he does in his fights. Canelo is popular for being popular. He looks like a star, and the fans treat him like one. Whether Canelo wins or loses his fights doesn’t seem to matter.
“I think so,” he said. “He’s fighting small guys, no one with a true big punch,” said Golovkin.
Recently, Canelo has been fighting guys that he clearly has a weight advantage over. In his last two fights, Canelo has beaten welterweight Amir Khan and former light welterweight Miguel Cotto. Canelo appeared to have a large weight advantage over both of those guys. In looking at the size difference between Canelo and those two fighters, I think he outweighed them both by a minimum of 20 pounds each. The weight difference was just too much for Khan and Cotto to deal with. Khan was always going to be in trouble against a big puncher like Canelo, because he already had shown in the past that he can’t handle power from even lightweights. Putting Khan in the ring with Canelo was just him asking for trouble.
Canelo is dropping down to the 154lb division for his fight against Liam Smith on September 17. Despite being an inch shorter than the 5’10” Smith, Canelo is expected to have a healthy weight advantage over him when the two fighters enter the ring at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. Smith rehydrates to the low 160s. If Canelo rehydrates to 185lbs, he’ll enjoy a 20 pound weight advantage over Smith. It’s going to make it nearly impossible for Smith to win the fight with him being out-sized like that.