By Allan Fox: Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya spoke to ESPN on Monday to talk about the September 16th fight between Golden Boy star Saul Canelo Alvarez and middleweight knockout knockout artist Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (37-0, 33 KOs). During the discussion, De La Hoya addressed the criticism leveled at him from UFC boss Dana White, who had been critical of the recent Canelo vs. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. fight that was televised on HBO pay-per-view.
White had talked about that fight in response to De La Hoya making negative comments about UFC star Conor McGregor’s potential mega-bout against boxing superstar Floyd Mayweather Jr. De La Hoya had put out a statement saying that he felt the Mayweather-McGregor fight would be bad for boxing due to it being a mismatch. White also said that De La Hoya was interested in matching one of his own fighters against McGregor. White didn’t say which of De La Hoya’s fighters he wanted to put in with McGregor. It was Canelo.
“My response is, I have to take the high road,” De La Hoya said to ESPN’s SportsCenter. “Obviously, he says my fight sucks, I say the same thing. That fight is going to suck. It really is,” said De La Hoya about the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight.
There’s too much money to be made off of the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight for it not to be made. McGregor isn’t well-known with a lot of boxing fans, but he’s popular enough in the MMA community to bring in a lot of PPV buys. It’s thought that the Mayweather-McGregor fight will bring in the same number of PPV buys as the Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao fight, which pulled in 4.6 million buys in 2015. I don’t think that’s going to happen. Mayweather has been inactive for too long for him to pull in a lot of boxing fans.
Additionally, Mayweather burned a lot of bridges with the boxing public with how he fought Pacquiao by playing it safe, not taking chances and doing little to make it exciting. The hiked prices for the PPV for the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight upset a lot of boxing fans. In Mayweather’s last fight of his career, he chose to take an easy opponent in Andre Berto instead of fighting the best at 147. Again, Mayweather played it safe by just boxing Berto, taking no chances, and making it boring for a lot of fans. The Mayweather-Berto fight generated only 400,000 buys.
That was a huge drop off for Mayweather for not only the Pacquiao fight, but all of his recent fights against guys like Robert Guerrero and Marcos Maidana. I think for a lot of fans, they’re not going to pay to see Mayweather fight anymore. That means that McGregor might be the only pulling in fans for the Mayweather-McGregor fight.
De La Hoya’s fight between Canelo and Chavez Jr. was an easy target for Dana White to go after, because it was such a dreadful fight for HBO PPV. It’s not that De La Hoya planned for the mismatch between Canelo and Chavez Jr. On paper, it was supposed to have been an exciting match-up between a brawler in Chavez Jr. and the smaller boxer/puncher Canelo. But for some reason, Chavez Jr. decided early on that he wasn’t going to throw punches, and he was just going to soak up shots and go the full 12 round distance.
To his credit, Chavez Jr. went the full 12 rounds in losing by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision by the scores 120-108 x 3. It was bad to watch, given how one-sided the fight turned out being. For PPV, Canelo-Chavez Jr. turned out to be a poisonous fight. The only thing good that can be said about the Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight was Golden Boy quickly had Golovkin enter the ring immediately after the spectacle was over.
The boxing fans at ringside were quite pleased at hearing the September 16th fight between Canelo and Golovkin announced. If not for Golovkin being brought into the ring, there might have been a lot of upset boxing fans after the fight. For the boxing fans that watched the Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight on HBO PPV, it’s likely that many of them switched channels or turned off their TVs after the judges’ scores were announced. These fans likely never got a chance to see GGG enter the ring.
“McGregor is not a boxer and he’s going up against the best boxer on the planet, in our generation, against Mayweather? And he’s 0-0 and he thinks he’s going to beat him? It’s impossible. I couldn’t beat him,” De La Hoya said.
De La Hoya is right in pointing out how much of a mismatch the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight is going to be. There’s nothing that can be done about. Mayweather and McGregor both want to fight each other, and the UFC is on board with letting the fight happen. It’s up to the boxing and MMA fans whether they want to pay to see the Mayweather-McGregor fight on PPV. If they do amount of reading on the internet, they’ll have plenty of time to be warned about how bad of a fight the Mayweather vs. McGregor match will be. It’s not as if they won’t hear negative stuff about the fight. If the fans are still interested in seeing the Mayweather-McGregor fight, then that’s on them. They’re the ones that are purchasing it.
If the PPV numbers drop off for boxing events for future fights after the Mayweather vs. McGregor match, then De La Hoya will have been proven right about that bout hurting the sport. Time will tell. One way for De La Hoya to prevent the Mayweather-McGregor fight from hurting boxing is to make sure that he puts Canelo back in with Golovkin 2 more times like he’s talking about wanting to do. On Monday, De La Hoya said he believes that Canelo and Golovkin will fight each other in a trilogy fight.
If De La Hoya wants to help boxing and minimize the negative fallout from the Mayweather-McGregor circus fight, then putting Canelo in with Golovkin three straight times would do the trick. However, things would likely have to work on Canelo’s favor in the first 2 fights with GGG for De La Hoya to want to take a risk by putting his golden goose in with Golovkin three straight times. Canelo’s career as a PPV attraction could be obliterated if Golovkin knocks him out 3 straight times. It could be comical by the third time the two fighters faced each other. The boxing public would already know what the results are going to be ahead of time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqxrfMiyWGU