By Dan Ambrose: Oscar De La Hoya says he’s given middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (37-0, 33 KOs) a generous offer to fight his star Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (48-1-1, 34 KOs) this September. The offer from De La Hoya is based on Golovkin’s pay-per-view numbers from his last fight against Daniel Jacobs on March 18th. Golovkin-Jacobs pulled in 170K PPV buys on HBO. De La Hoya says he’s revised his original offer he’d made to Golovkin due to his low numbers for the Jacobs’ fight.
De La Hoya says the Canelo-Golovkin fight CAN be made, but Golovkin will need to accept his fair offer. De La Hoya says Canelo really wants the Golovkin fight in September, and he’s wanted to fight him for a long time. It has nothing to do with Golovkin’s close win over Jacobs. Canelo has wanted to fight him anyway.
“Right now, Canelo is a middleweight,” said De La Hoya to Fighthype.com. “He’s a full blown middleweight and that’s the division he’s going to conquer and dominate very soon. Of course,” said De La Hoya when asked if Canelo will be fighting Golovkin soon. “This is probably the last time I’m going to answer it. It’s September and that’s it. If we can agree to the contracts and if we can agree to the fair deal I’m offering Golovkin, because given the numbers he obviously did, both parties have to be fair, and I’m being more than fair, more than generous,” said De La Hoya.
When you hear De La Hoya saying he’s giving Golovkin a “fair deal” and being “more than generous,” it suggests that he doesn’t see Triple G being worthy of sharing equally in the money he helps bring in. Unfortunately, it looks like De La Hoya wants Canelo to take the lion’s share of the revenue with Golovkin being given whatever is left over. You can’t call it chump change, but it won’t be as much as Canelo will be getting.
Given that Golovkin hadn’t agreed to the original flat fee offer, which was said to be $15 million, it’s highly unlikely that he’s going to be agreeable to a deal that will be even less than that. De La Hoya says he’s pulled the original offer to Golovkin off the table in light of the numbers he got for the Jacobs fight. That statement from De La Hoya suggests that he’s no longer seriously interested in making the Canelo-Golovkin fight. Either that or he’s misjudged Golovkin by thinking he’ll accept an even lower offer. It might be more of the former.
I don’t think De La Hoya is seriously interested in making the fight at this point. If he was, he would realize that making an even smaller offer after the first offer was rejected by Golovkin’s management is going in the wrong direction. If De La Hoya believes that he can use Golovkin’s low PPV numbers for the Jacobs fight as leverage to get a better deal for Canelo, I think he’s barking up the wrong tree. Golovkin will obviously move on if he’s not being treated fairly by De La Hoya and Canelo. He’s not going to accept a tiny portion of the revenue that he helps attract with his popularity. Canelo isn’t going to make the same kind of money fighting anyone else in boxing that he can make against Golovkin unless someone like Floyd Mayweather Jr. makes a comeback to boxing. Mayweather wants to fight an easy mark in Conor McGregor, but he’s not showing interest in taking on any dangerous real fighters from boxing.
“As long as they sign the contract, we have a fight, because Canelo, believe me, wants him, and it doesn’t have to do with the Jacobs’ fight,” said De La Hoya about Golovkin. “Canelo has wanted him for the longest time. Canelo looks good. Jacobs looks good. Triple G looks good. Look, it’s all about fighting the best. At 26-years-old, there’s no doubt in my mind that Canelo has been fighting the very best,” said De La Hoya.
De La Hoya is talking about giving Golovkin a percentage split for the Canelo fight. It’s likely going to need to be at least a 70-30 deal to make the fight happen. I can’t imagine Golovkin ever agreeing to a 75-25 or 80-20 deal for a fight with Canelo. De La Hoya needs to be flexible in the negotiations. He’s not dealing with a beggar in Golovkin. This is an unbeaten world champion who holds 3 of the 4 titles at middleweight. By the time Goovkin faces Canelo in September, he’ll very likely have all 4 world title belts at 160. De La Hoya says that Canelo will conquer and dominate the middleweight division, but I doubt that.
Canelo will need to beat Golovkin, Jermall Charlo and Daniel Jacobs for him to be the No.1 guy at 160. Canelo never proved that he was the No.1 guy at 154. He beat guys like Liam Smith, Austin Trout, Erislandy Lara, James Kirkland and Alfredo Angulo. However, Jermall Charlo was viewed as the No.1 fighter at 154 by a lot of boxing fans, and Canelo never fought him. Canelo’s win over Lara was controversial in their fight in 2014. Lara did enough to deserve a win over Canelo. That fight was much more controversial than Golovkin’s win over Jacobs. There’s no comparison. Canelo landed only 31 head shots in the entire fight with Lara. Canelo was missing all night long with his punches. How do you win a fight having landed only 31 head shots when you fail to knockdown your opponent?
The worst thing that could have happened to the Canelo-Golovkin fight was the PPV numbers for the Golovkin-Jacobs fight. Oscar is now trying to use those numbers as leverage to squeeze Golovkin into agreeing to take an even smaller cut of the revenue than previously. I don’t think the fight is ever going to happen now unless Golovkin’s career goes downhill in the near future. The fight might happen at that point because he’ll likely be willing to take the small percentage or whatever is offered to him. De La Hoya is likely to keep matching Canelo carefully by keeping him away from the talented fighters and focusing more on weaker opposition or older fighters that are no longer relevant in the sport.
