By Allan Fox: The replay of last Saturday’s Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (37-0-1, 33 KOs) vs. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (49-1-2, 34 KOs) will be televised tonight on HBO Boxing starting at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT. Canelo vs. GGG replay on HBO will be followed by the lightweight champion fight between WBA title holder Jorge Linares and Luke Campbell on HBO World Championship Boxing. Linares-Campbell will be shown live on HBO.
Canelo v Golovkin fight ended in a 12 round draw last Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was a controversial ending to the fight, with many of the fans in the boxing world believing that GGG had done enough to get the nod by the judges. Apart from the judging controversy, it was an exciting fight from start to finish. The judges turned in a strange set of scores for the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight. The scores were as follows: 118-110 Canelo, 115-113 for Golovkin and 114-114.
Judge Adelaide Byrd scoring the fight 10 rounds to 2 in favor of Canelo has many people scratching their heads trying to understand where she came up with the score. It made no sense, because that’s a score that judges give for one-sided fights. That’s not how the Canelo-Golovkin fight played out. The judge that scored the fight a draw at 114-114 gave Canelo round 7, a round in which he took a beating from Golovkin. If the judge had given that round to Golovkin, he would have won the fight by a 12 round split decision. The scoring was peculiar from these 2 judges.
There still hasn’t been an announcement yet by HBO but there’s a chance that the Canelo-Golovkin fight could pull in 2 million buys on HBO PPV, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN.
”I know the HBO folks think there’s a good chance it topped 2 million which would be massive,” said Rafael at ESPN.
A lot of boxing fans will be seeing the Canelo vs. GGG fight for the first time tonight, and you can bet that many of them will be incensed at the results. Depending on how many boxing fans tune in to watch the Canelo-Golovkin replay tonight, there could be a tremendous amount of upset fans at seeing a result they don’t agree with.
The Nevada State Athletic Commission needs to work at filtering out the poor judges, and improve the quality of the people that judge the boxing matches in their state. It would be a pity if boxing promoters start avoiding having their fighters compete in Vegas for fear that they can’t trust the judges to do a competent job at scoring the fights.
If the Canelo vs. Triple G fight brings in over 2 million buys, it would go down as one of the biggest fights in PPV history in boing. Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor fight is thought to have brought in over 4 million buys on Showtime PPV. The final numbers still haven’t been released yet. The record for buys is Mayweather’s fight against Manny Pacquiao in 2015, which pulled in 4.6 million buys.
Here are the records for PPV buys for boxing:
• Mayweather vs. Pacquiao – 4.6 million buys
• Oscar De La Hoya vs. Mayweather – 2.4 million buys
• Mayweather vs. Canelo Alvarez – 2.2 million buys
If the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight does bring in over 2 million buys, then that will increase the chances that the boxing public will see a rematch take place between the two fighters on May 5 next year on Cinco de Mayo. That’s when Canelo plans on fighting again. Golden Boy wants the rematch to take place in Las Vegas once again. Rafael expects Canelo-GGG to come back to the T-Mobile Arena in Vegas for the second fight. However, Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler says he wants to make the rematch in New York or Texas.
Canelo and Golden Boy are the power players in the negotiations, so Loeffler and Golovkin will likely need to come back to Vegas if they want the rematch. The only way the fight will change venues is if Golden Boy and Canelo are feeling in the mood to be agreeable. Canelo tends to want to do things his way, and it’s unlikely that he’ll bend to the wishes of Golovkin and Loeffler.
It would be one way for Canelo to defuse some of the controversy about the judging from their fight last Saturday. There was a lot of talk going into the Canelo-Gennady fight that Golovkin had no chance of winning a decision over a money fighter like Canelo in Las Vegas, because he’s brought so much money to the city in the past with his fights.
The controversial judges’ scores from the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight reinforced that belief that Golovkin never had a chance to a decision no matter how well he did. In the minds of some boxing fans, Canelo and Golovkin going back to Las Vegas is like going back to the scene of a crime. Obviously, Canelo wasn’t hurt by the judges giving him a 12 round draw, but Golovkin sure was. He fought well enough to win the fight. It would have helped Golovkin’s boxing career in a huge way if he had been given a win over Canelo. It likely would have meant millions more for Golovkin when it came to making the rematch. A draw means Canelo and Golden Boy can give Golovkin the same deal as last time. If the judges had given Golovkin the win, he could have asked for a larger split. So in a way, the judging from last Saturday night will end up costing Golovkin a large amount of money.
Canelo’s body language after the fight looked to be that of a fighter that had lost to Golovkin. It looked like Canelo knew he had lost the fight. He wasn’t making a lot of noise about the draw. He looked like someone that had lost the fight and had been given a gift by the judges. When Canelo was interviewed by HBO, he was roundly booed by the boxing fans at the T-Mobile Arena. That was Canelo’s crowd, but they still booed him. Canelo wasn’t coming across as a good sport during the interview. He sounded like he was disgruntled. The things that Canelo and Golovkin said during their post-fight interviews were like night and day. Golovkin was upbeat despite the draw, and he was giving a positive message to the crowd about the Mexican holiday that the two fighters were fighting on. Golovkin seemed to be thinking more about the fans rather than himself, and the fans appreciated it.
Golovkin showed Canelo too much respect during the fight by not attacking him hard when he had him against the ropes, and not throwing punches to the body. When Golovkin had Canelo against the ropes, he would back off without attacking him. Golovkin was content to jab. It wasn’t the way that Golovkin had fought most of his boxing career. In normal cases, Golovkin would attack his opponents all out when he had them against the ropes, as he would try and stop them.
In the Canelo and Danny Jacobs fights, Golovkin backed off when he had them against the ropes. He was satisfied with just jabbing. Golovkin edged Jacobs by a 12 round unanimous decision on March 18 in a very close fight. But the judges weren’t ready to give Golovkin a second victory when he fought in the same way for his fight against the 27-year-old Canelo Alvarez last Saturday, even though you can argue that he beat him in a more decisive way than he did Jacobs. Canelo is a lot more popular fighter than Jacobs. Money fighters like Canelo and Floyd Mayweather Jr. are hard to beat by decision.
The draw for Golovkin failed to move him up in Ring Magazine’s pound-for-pound ratings last weekend. Golovkin had a chance to slide into the top spot at No.1 in the ratings if he was given a win by the judges. Andre Ward announced his retirement this week, leaving a hole for the top spot in the pound for pound ratings. Golovkin’s draw kept him in the No.2 spot. Ring Magazine didn’t factor in the controversy over the results of the fight when they decided to keep Golovkin at No.2. They just looked at the overall result of the fight, which was a draw, and decided to keep GGG in place at number.2.
Golovkin will have to wait and see whether Canelo will give him a rematch next year. Golden Boy Promotions president Eric Gomez says they want a rematch for Canelo, but he’s not sure when and where the fight will take place. It’s up to the negotiations, and it’s also up to Canelo.