By Dan Ambrose: Middleweight world champion Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin reportedly wants a 50-50 equal split of the revenue for a rematch with Saul Canelo Alvarez on September 15, according to Dan Rafael. GGG is said to have received a 60-40 split for his previous fight with Canelo last September.
GGG asking for a 50-50 split could be the reason why Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya is saying they’re ‘moving on’ and looking at matching Canelo against one of the following middleweights in September: Daniel Jacobs, Jermall Charlo, Billy Joe Saunders and Gary ‘Spike’ O’Sullivan.
While some boxing fans might think that Golovkin is being greedy for asking for a 50-50 split for the rematch with Canelo, you have to look at it from his perspective. Golovkin wanted to fight Canelo in a rematch last December, but the Mexican star didn’t want to fight. He wanted to rest for 8 months until May 5, 2018.
Golovkin, who usually fights three times a year, missed out on a payday last December, because he was waiting for the Canelo rematch. That was lost money for GGG. Then after that, Canelo tested positive for clenbuterol twice, wiping out the rematch with GGG. It cost Golovkin a lot of money with Canelo testing positive twice for clenbuterol and then pulling out of their May 5 rematch. That was a lot of wasted time, effort and he put in a lot of hard work without getting the Canelo fight. For a lot of boxing fans, they felt Golovkin deserved an even 50-50 equal split from the first fight with Canelo, because it was him that helped bring in the huge amount of boxing fans. Without GGG, Canelo probably would have been looking at far lower PPV numbers on HBO.
Canelo’s fight against Liam Smith brought in approximately 300,000 PPV buys on HBO. Golovkin helped Canelo bring in well over 1 million buys. Since GGG was the ingredient that Canelo needed to bring in a tremendous number of buys, it makes sense that he should be able to share equally with the revenue for the fight, especially after he was inconvenienced with Canelo testing positive for clenbuterol twice, and then pulling out of the rematch before being given a 6-month suspension by the Nevada State Athletic Commission.
”He absolutely deserves better terms now but how much more is the issue. He wants 50-50 and that is unreasonable in my view,” Rafael said on his chat on Friday at ESPN.com.
Whatever the purse split was for the first Canelo-GGG fight last year on September 16, you have to believe Golovkin deserves a bigger split because of Canelo’s positive tests. The controversy over the scoring of the first Canelo-Gennady match is another thing. The judges scored the fight as a 12 round draw hurt Golovkin’s ability to ask for more money in the rematch. It’s a different story if the judges had given Golovkin the win rather than a draw, as his promote Tom Loeffler would have gone into the negotiations with his fighter being the winner rather than coming into after a controversial tie. The scoring for the Canelo vs. Golovkin by the Nevada judges changed the whole dynamics for the negotiations for the rematch. If Golovkin is ignoring the controversial scoring by 2 of the judges, who scored it 118-110 for Canelo and 114-114, and seeing himself as the winner of the fight in the eyes of the boxing world, then it’s quite logical for him to be asking for a 50-50 split for the rematch. Many of the fans have already invalidated the results of the first Canelo vs. Gennady fight, and view it as a victory for Golovkin. The fans that believe that Canelo deserved a draw or a win over Golovkin are on the margin with their opinions, as the overwhelming amount of fans saw it as a ‘W’ for GGG. It makes sense for Golovkin to be going by what the fans feel, not what 2 of the judges put down on their scorecards on the night. People Golovkin won the first fight. Therefore, he has the right to ask for an equal split for the rematch with Canelo.
De La Hoya says he’s going to talk to the management for Jacobs, Carlo and Billy Joe Saunders to see if he can get one of them to face Canelo on September 15. That’s obviously hard to believe that any of those fighters has a realistic chance of facing the soon to be 28-year-old Canelo on September 15. The opinion of many boxing fans is there’s only one Plan-B option for Canelo to fight in September and that’s Gary ‘Spike’ O’Sullivan. He’s not a threat to beat Canelo, and he’ll make him look good in losing O’Sullivan will try to win, but he doesn’t have the talent or the size that the other fighters De La Hoya have mentioned. Jermall Charlo is 6’0” with a huge reach and tons of punching power. Canelo would be oversized by Charlo. The fight would look like two guys from different weight classes facing each other. In boxing, the much taller fighters generally win. There are exceptions to the rule, of course, but for the most part the bigger fighter beat up on the shorter guys. Canelo would be at the mercy of Charlo if those two fought each other, and the same applies if Billy Joe Saunders and Jacobs fought the Mexican star as well. Those guys would jab Canelo all night long and stay on top of him to keep him from running like he did against GGG.
Golovkin’s options for big money fights are just as limited as Canelo’s. The two fighters can only make money fighting each other right now. Canelo could make a ton of money if he took a risk and fought someone outside of the 160lb division, because there’s nobody in the weight class other than GGG for him to fight to make huge cash. Unfortunately for Canelo, he’s too short at 5’8” to take on a good super middleweight or a light heavyweight, even though it’s believed that he rehydrates to close to 180 for his fights. Canelo would be too small in terms of height and reach if he were to fight one of the top 168lb fighters like George Groves or a top light heavyweight like Dmitry Bivol, Adonis Stevenson, Artur Beterbiev or Sergey Kovalev. Canelo would make a lot of money, but would end up getting batted around the ring like a baseball by those guys. Canelo is too short for even the middleweight division. We saw that plainly against Golovkin. When GGG was on the outside, Canelo was helpless due to his short arms, and inability to trade jabs with him. What we didn’t figure is the judges working the fight would ignore all the head-snapping jabs that Golovkin landed each round and seemed to be scoring the rounds based on 2 or 3 punches hard punches that Canelo landed. Canelo’s options for huge money fights aren’t there right now for the middleweight division. Whether you like it or not, GGG is the only game in town for Canelo. If Canelo is going to fight someone else instead on September 15, you’ve got to imagine the purse split for a fight against one of them would be greatly tilted in Canelo’s favor. Canelo make a lot of money if he fights someone who is only offered a flat fee to fight him rather than a percentage split. If they do receive a percentage split, it would be something that would be lopsided in Canelo’s favor Canelo isn’t a world champion, so he doesn’t have to give his opponent a certain percentage split. That’s the beauty of not holding a belt.
Golovkin comes off better if the two never fight again than Canelo does, as he’s perceived as the winner of the first fight and he wasn’t popped on two drug tests for clenbuterol. If any of them need the rematch, it’s clearly Canelo. He has a lot more to prove than GGG. If Canelo can live with being seen as a fighter that was given an undeserved draw in his fight with Golovkin, then then maybe it’s not important for him to face the Kazakhstan fighter ever again. I don’t believe that’s the case. I think Canelo wants the rematch with Golovkin and if he doesn’t get the fight, it’ll hurt his legacy. Golovkin can forever tell the fans he was robbed by the judges in the Canelo fight, and the fans would agree with him. As such, Golovkin’s career won’t be tainted in the same way Canelo’s will if they never fight again. Canelo needs Golovkin a lot more than he needs him at this point. Canelo won’t be able to help his career by fighting Spike O’Sullivan in September and then David Lemieux next May, like many boxing fans expect him to. Fighting those two guys back will undoubtedly make Canelo look bad. He already looks bad for fighting Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. last year in a match that was advertised as being a war, but it turned out to be a terrible fight between a weight-drained, has-been fighting a pumped up junior middleweight. It was a farce and painful to watch. Canelo could have fought a relevant middleweight like Jacobs or Charlo last year before his fight with GGG, but he chose Chavez Jr. If Canelo faces O’Sullivan in September, it’s going to be another Chavez Jr. fight all over again. The fact is that if Canelo wants to be seen an elite middleweight, he’s going toned to fight the best in the division. He can’t pick out beatable fringe contenders like O’Sullivan and Lemieux and expect the boxing public to get excited after he destroys them.
If Canelo and Golovkin fight each other again, they need to do it in a neutral venue like New York. Going back to Las Vegas would be seen as Golden Boy trying to tilt the playing field in Canelo’s favor, as this is his favorite city to fight, and it’s where he was given a 12 round draw against GGG last September. Fighting in Vegas again would be perceived by a lot of boxing fans as another robbery, and it might not be taken seriously.
If Canelo ends up fighting someone like Jermall Charlo, he could be sorry that he didn’t take the Golovkin fight at a 50-50 split, because I think there’s a very good chance that he’ll be destroyed by him the same way Hugo Centeno Jr. was obliterated in two rounds last April. If Canelo loses to Charlo, then he’ll be lucky to get a 50-50 split with GGG afterwards. The interest in the Canelo-Golovkin II rematch will evaporate entirely if Canelo gets beaten by someone else. I don’t think for a second that Golden Boy will let Canelo fight Charlo. That’s not realistic and it goes against the type of guys that he’s been traditionally matched against. Canelo is in a situation where he’s going to be facing intense criticism from the boxing public if he fails to face the top tier guys in the division from this point on. If Canelo wants to call himself a middleweight, then he needs to prove that he can bet them without controversy by facing the likes of Charlo, Jacobs or Saunders, if not GGG. I don’t think De La Hoya realizes how badly he’ll hurt Canelo if he matches him against O’Sullivan in September. Not only will that fight make Canelo less money than what he’s get in a second fight against GGG at a 50-50 purse split, but he’ll be perceived as cherry-picking by the fans. It’s a lose-lose proposition for Canelo. If Canelo is going to walk away from the GGG rematch, then he at least needs to fight Charlo or Jacobs. Personally, I think Charlo is the far better fighter of the two. Jacobs is starting to look like a shot fighter, which might be one of the reasons why De La Hoya is interested in signing him for Canelo’s next fight. Charlo is looking unbeatable. Jacobs isn’t.
One fighter that De La Hoya hasn’t mentioned for Canelo to face in September is WBO junior middleweight champion Jaime Munguia, who recently destroyed Sadam Ali in 4 rounds to capture the World Boxing Organization 154lb title earlier this month on May 12 on HBO. Canelo might not take a lot of criticism from fans if he were to fight the 21-year-old Munguia. He’s a decent choice for Canelo to fight because he’s a huge fighter with massive punching power. Munguia is far from the finished product though, and he’s not in the same league as Jermall Charlo. A lot of hardcore boxing fans would be interested in seeing Canelo and Munguia square off on September 15 on the Mexican Independence Day holiday. I think that fight is a much better option for Canelo than Spike O’Sullivan for September if Golden Boy doesn’t want to give GGG the 50-50 purse split that he’s supposedly asking for.