Marquez criticizes Golden Boy’s offer to Golovkin for Canelo fight

By Boxing News - 10/03/2016 - Comments

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By Dan Ambrose: Former four division world champion Juan Manuel Marquez sees Golden Boy Promotions recent eight-figure offer to IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin to fight Golden Boy fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez as a way for them to swerve around the fight with the Kazakhstan fighter.

Marquez doesn’t see it as a serious offer from Golden Boy, as he feels that a serious offer would be for Golovkin to be given a percentage offer of 30-40 percent of the revenue rather than a flat fee of $10 million for the fight, which is only a fraction of what the fight would likely bring in on HBO pay-per-view. Marquez sees Golden Boy’s offer as a way message that says, ‘We do not want the fight.’

“They are really punishing Gennady Golovkin, because it is a way to avoid Golovkin. It’s a way of saying ‘we do not want the fight. We’re going to pay so much. Would you accept it?”
It does sound like Golden Boy’s figure offer to Golovkiin was a way for them to tell him and his promoter at K2 to get lost and forget about Canelo. But the offer would appear to serve another purpose by giving Canelo and Golden Boy cover from the boxing public by letting them know that they’re not the reason why the Golovkin fight isn’t taking place.

After Canelo’s recent fight against WBA junior middleweight champion Liam Smith on September 17 last month, Golden Boy CEO Oscar De La Hoya and Canelo both made it a point to let the media and the boxing fans know about the eight-figure offer that was made to Golovkin’s team a month prior for fight in September 2017. Canelo and De La Hoya took advantage of the cameras that were on them and revealed that an offer had been made to Golovkin. What they didn’t say was that the offer wasn’t a serious one. They merely said that offer that Golovkin was given was two to four times more than what he’d made in his past fights. Of course, the Canelo-Golovkin fight will likely bring in 20 to 30 times more pay-per-view buys than what Golovkin received in his only fight on PPV against David Lemieux. So if the fight is going to make many times more than any fight in Golovkin’s past, then he would be getting underpaid if he’s only going to be getting two to four times more than his past fights. Golovkin and his promote Tom Loeffler would never accept an offer that low.

Marquez said this to ‘Golpe a Golpe’ ESPN about Golden Boy Promotion’s offer to Golovkin for the Canelo fight:

“If the fight will generate a certain amount, it has to pay well (Golovkin), because not only will fight Canelo. Whoever brings in the people for Canelo Alvarez, in this case Golovkin, he [Canelo] has to agree the match if he wants to prove he is the best in the division. So you make an offer of 30, 35, or 40%.”

Marquez further said that Canelo could tell Golden Boy to give Golovkin a better deal that’s not as ridiculous as the flat feet that was offered to him. If Canelo wants the fight against Golovkin, he could push Golden Boy to make it by them giving Golovkin a reasonable offer. Without Canelo pushing Golden Boy to make the fight, it’s probably not going to get made unless Golovkin is willing to take the offer from Golden Boy.

The $10 million offer from Golden Boy obviously isn’t 30 to 40% of the revenue for the Canelo-Golovkin fight. It’s a flat fee offer. If the fight generates $400 million, then Golovkin gets $10 million and Golden Boy and Canelo get the other $390 million. That’s an example. We don’t know how much revenue a fight between Canelo and Golovkin will bring in. However, with those two fighters being the biggest stars in the sport in the United States at this time, it’s reasonable to assume that the fight will do no less than two million pay-per-view buys.

You can’t compare the interest in a Canelo-Golovkin fight with that of Canelo’s fight a year ago against a past his best Miguel Cotto in November 2015, which brought in 900,000 pay-per-view buys on HBO. Cotto had already been exposed in the past by Antonio Margarito, Manny Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Austin Trout. There’s no comparison to Cotto and Golovkin. Cotto was just a smaller, older fighter that had beaten 40-year-old Sergio Martinez at the end of his career in 2014 to pick up the WBA middleweight title in a catch-weight fight.

Cotto didn’t beat a good fighter that was in his prime. The Sergio Martinez that beat Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in 2012 would have done a number on Cotto. I think it would have been a mismatch. The interest from boxing fans in a match between Canelo and Golovkin would greatly surpass the 900K that the Canelo vs. Cotto fight pulled in. Golden Boy’s $10 million offer made to Golovkin has to be taken as a joke, because they’re basically letting him know that he won’t be able to share the revenue equally that he helps bring in for a fight against Canelo.

If all Golden Boy is willing to offer Golovkin is a flat feet now to fight Canelo, when will they be open to giving him a percentage deal for the fight? Will Golden Boy offer Golovkin a percentage deal when he’s older and harmless to Canelo? If they do that, then it wouldn’t make sense because the boxing fans won’t want to see Canelo fighting another old guy. Canelo has already fought a lot of timers in the past in his fights against Shane Mosley, James Kirkland, Alfredo Angulo and Carlos Baldomir. If Golden Boy wants to take advantage of the interest that is there from the boxing public in the Golovkin v. Canelo fight, then they need to make the fight happen now. They’ve already waited a year. The fight should have happened in 2015.

It’s going to be interesting to see what Golden Boy says in 2017 if the Canelo-Golovkin fight doesn’t take place in the fall like De La Hoya has been talking about. Will De La Hoya and Golden Boy President Eric Gomez say that Golovkin and his promtoerTom Loeffler fails to agree to the eight figure offer or will it be some other reason why the fight couldn’t get made. In the meantime, Canelo’s popularity isn’t likely going to increase. If Golden Boy is merely going to be matching him against guys like WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders, who some boxing fans see as a paper champion, Canelo likely isn’t going to bring in more PPV buys than the reported 300,000 he brought in for his mismatch against Liam Smith last month. Fans want to see Canelo take on Golovkin, not fight little known champions like Saunders. Canelo needs to take the most dangerous fights in the 154 to 175 divisions if he wants to increase his popularity. That means he’s got to fight Golovkin, Daniel Jacobs, Chris Eubank Jr., Demetrius Andrade, Erislandy Lara, Julian Williams, Jermall Charlo, Jermell Charlo, James DeGale, Gilberto Ramirez, Badou Jack, Callum Smith, Sergey Kovalev, Andre Ward, Adonis Stevenson and Artur Beterbiev. If those are the only guys that Canelo fights for the remainder of is career, then you have to say that he was matched tough. You could respect that, even if Canelo lost to all of those fighters, which I believe would be the case. At least you could respect Canelo for fighting the best instead of facing guys like Kirkland, Angulo, Amir Khan, Liam Smith and Saunders.