By Dan Ambrose: If middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin’s promoters at K2 lose the purse bid with WBA ‘regular’ middleweight champion Daniel Jacobs’ manager Al Haymon this Monday in the scheduled WBA purse bid, there’s a possibility that he could put the fight on Showtime, according to RingTV. That could mean the fight would be on regular Showtime and not on pay-per-view. Golovkin is under contract with HBO Boxing, and it’s possible that they might not be agree to let him fight on Showtime unless he’s got language in his contract that would allow for him to fight on another network.
There’s talk that Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler could negotiate the fight with Haymon before Monday to avert the purse bid. If that is what happens, then there’s a possibility the fight would take place on HBO.
There’s little chance that Loeffler would agree to a deal that didn’t have the Golovkin-Jacobs fight taking place on HBO unless Golovkin has the flexibility with his contract to fight on Showtime.
It would be a pity if the Golovkin vs. Jacobs fails to take place due to Jacobs’ management winning the purse bid and insisting on putting the fight on Showtime. If they know full well that Golovkin won’t be able to do this, then it could be interpreted that they never wanted the fight in the first place. Golovkin would have to pull out of the Jacobs fight if they insisted on staging the fight on Showtime and HBO wasn’t going to go along with that. Golovkin would likely lose his WBA 160lb title, and he’d have nothing to show for the three months that his promoter Loeffler was in negotiations with Jacobs’ management.
Stephen Espinoza of Showtime said this to RingTV.com about the Golovkin-Jacobs fight:
“In my experiences, some of these contracts include an out which allows a fighter to fight on another network if it becomes necessary because of a purse bid,” Espinoza said. “Other contracts do not have that provision. I’m not privy to the contract, so I don’t know exactly what it is but we’d like to pursue it and we’ve thrown our hat in the ring and made it known that we’re definitely interested. But I imagine the HBO deal would be an obstacle.”
Golovkin will get a big payday for the Jacobs fight, but it’s not likely that he’ll make as much as he did in his last fight against welterweight Kell Brook. That fight took place on Sky Box Office PPV in the UK, and it did well.
Golovkin will get a 75/25 purse split if the fight goes to a purse bid on Monday. That’s the good news. That bad news is that if his promoter loses the bid, then Haymon could stick the fight on Showtime. Then we could see Golovkin bail on the fight if HBO won’t give him the green light to fight on Showtime. Unless it states Golovkin’s contract, he’s going to be stuck having to vacate his WBA title.
With all the hassle of the protected negotiations, I don’t think the boxing fans will be too broken up about the Golovkin-Jacobs fight not taking place. If the fans have a choice of seeing Golovkin fight two or three times against lesser fighters or waste half a year in negotiations with Jacobs, I think the fans would prefer to see a more active Golovkin against other fighters.
It’s good that Golovkin and Jacobs will finally get this offer on Monday. We’ll find out if the fight is going to take place or not. I honestly don’t think the boxing fans will care too much if it doesn’t happen, because Jacobs isn’t popular like Saul Canelo Alvarez. Jacobs is known on the east coast and mostly by the hardcore fans. He’s not a huge name to where the fans will be extremely upset if the Golovkin-Jacobs fight fails to take place.
Espinoza wants the fight on regular Showtime, because he doesn’t see it as being a big enough one to put on Showtime ESPN, and he’s right. The Golovkin-Jacobs fight is arguably smaller match than Golovkin’s fight against David Lemieux last year. That PPV match, which was televised on HBO PPV, reportedly brought in around 100,000 buys. Those are not good numbers.
If Golovkin’s contract with HBO doesn’t allow him to fight outside of their network, then you would have to wonder what the motive would be for Haymon to insist on putting the fight on Showtime if he wins the purse bid. If Haymon knows that Golovkin can’t fight on Showtime, then it would seem like he didn’t want the fight and just wanted Golovkin’s WBA ‘super ‘World middleweight title.
Jacobs needs to fight the more popular guys in his boxing career, because he’s only fought two dangerous guys his entire career in Peter Quillin and Dmitry Pirog, and he lost the fight to Pirog by a 5th round knockout in 2010. So Jacobs is 1-1 in his only two fights against really good opposition. Jacobs needs to fight the best guys available in order to increase his popularity. Instead, we’ve seen Jacobs fighting Caleb Truax, Jarrod Fletcher, and Sergio Mora [x 2]. Jacobs has been fighting a lot of weak guys, and that obviously hasn’t helped make him more popular.