By Jim Dower: Oscar De La Hoya hasn’t entirely given up on the idea of matching his flagship fighter Saul Canelo Alvarez against Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin, but he says the rematch will have to wait until Cinco de Mayo in May of 2019. Further, Golovkin (38-0-1, 34 KOs) will have to back off from the 50-50 revenue split that he’s been requesting for a rematch with Canelo Alvarez.
Golden Boy is in negotiations with Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing USA to put together a fight between Canelo (49-1-2, 34 KOs) and his fighter former IBF middleweight champion Daniel Jacobs (34-2, 29 KOs) on September 15 on HBO PPV. De La Hoya has given the Canelo-Jacobs negotiations until mid-June to get completed; otherwise he’ll be moving on once again to find someone else to face Canelo on that date.
Golden Boy might wind up with Gary ‘Spike’ O’Sullivan for Canelo to fight in September if their offers aren’t agreed to. Hearn has already said that the first offer from Golden Boy for Jacobs isn’t what they’re looking at for the fight. They want a better deal. Hearn says he knows what the value is for the Canelo vs. Jacobs fight as far as PPV buys. Just how he would know that is unclear, as Hearn is from the UK and clearly not experienced at making predictions of how many buys U.S fights will generate. Even De La Hoya is wrong more often than not with his wild predictions.
“If GGG ever comes to his senses we can fight next year if he wants for Cinco de Mayo,” De La Hoya said to ESPN.com. ”I tell you one thing — the money he would make for Canelo he now has to fight five or six opponents to make that kind of money. We’ve moved on.”
I think Golovkin understands fully that he’ll make less money fighting other opposition, but he’s standing by his principals in wanting a better deal for the Canelo rematch after everything that happened. At this point, De La Hoya would be better off planning on having Canelo fight someone else in May 2019 rather than Golovkin. If Golden Boy isn’t going to give GGG a 50-50 deal, then they’re going to need to either make it very close number at 55-45 or else they’re going to need to pick someone else for Canelo to fight. 60-40 and 65-35 isn’t likely going to get GGG to agree to take the fight.
Canelo tested positive twice for clenbuterol, and Golovkin didn’t like how his fight against him last September was scored by the Nevada judges, who gave Canelo a 12 round draw. The rest of the world saw the fight overwhelmingly in Golovkin’s favor. The fight brought in 1.3 million buys on HBO. It did well, but the results left a bad taste in GGG’s mouth. He also didn’t like the idea that he, as the IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion, was only given 30 percent of the revenue for the fight.
Golden Boy only offered Golovkin a slight increase to 35 percent for the rematch. Presumably, the 5 percent was to cover the troubles that Golovkin were through with Canelo pulling out of their May 5 fight on three weeks’ notice after testing positive twice for clenbuterol in Guadalajara, Mexico. Canelo and Golovkin were supposed to fight a rematch at the same venue as the first fight at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. GGG’s management was on board with that, as well as the 65/35 split.
“He’s stubborn and wanting 50-50 and it’s not going to happen,” De La Hoya said about Golovkin. “The Canelo train has left the station.”
You can say that Canelo and Golden Boy are stubborn as well by not agreeing to give Golovkin the 50-50 split, because they may wind up very sorry that they didn’t if Jacobs beats Alvarez on September 15. There’s a very good chance that Jacobs does beat Canelo, because he’ll have had a massive amount of time to study how he fought in his last fight against Golovkin. If Canelo chooses to fight along the ropes like he did against GGG, it won’t come as a shock to Jacobs. His team are going to plan for that, and they’re also going to plan for Canelo coming straight at them like he did in desperation at times in the last three rounds of his fight against Golovkin. Whatever game plan Canelo has for the Jacobs fight, it won’t be a surprise to the New Yorker. He’ll be ready for whatever tricks Canelo has. It would be a surprise if Canelo decides to fight against the ropes, because he’ll be giving away too much reach to the taller 5’11” Jacobs. It would be a mistake if Canelo moves along the ropes, because Jacobs is good at cutting off the ring against movers.
Golovkin fought on May 5 against Vanes Martirosyan, stopping him in the 2nd round on HBO at the StubHub Center in Carson, California. GGG made only $1 million for the Martirosyan fight. He would have made $20 million if he fought Canelo with a 65-35 split. Golovkin was criticized by the boxing fans for selecting Martirosyan, who hadn’t fought in over two years, and had lost 2 out of his last 3 fights. Also, Martirosyan had never fought at middleweight in his career. But this was an opponent that was picked out on short notice after Canelo pulled out of the fight on 3 weeks’ notice. GGG wasn’t going to fight his IBF mandatory challenger Sergiy Derevyanchenko on three weeks’ notice, because he’s too of a high-level fighter to take on short notice. Many boxing fans expected GGG to take Derevyanchenko on short notice, but that would have been a mistake on his part.
If Golovkin had agreed to take the fight on short notice, it probably would have been a disaster for Derevyanchenko and his promoter, because the Ukrainian fighter likely hadn’t trained nearly as hard as Golovkin had in getting ready for the May 5 Canelo fight. It wouldn’t have been fair for Derevyanchenko to take a fully tuned GGG in three weeks’ notice, but I don’t believe his promoter Lou DiBella ever expected Golovkin’s team to agree to that fight. DiBella seemed like he was betting that Golovkin’s management would balk at the idea, which would allow them to get the International Boxing Federation to step in and order the fight with a firm deadline. In this case, Golovkin has until August 3 to defend his IBF title against Derevyanchenko unless the sanctioning body chooses to allow him to take a unification fight against WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders. That’s a possibility for Golovkin. His promoter Loeffler mentioned Saunders as being an option for Golovkin in his next fight.
Golovkin will be looking to break Bernard Hopkins’ record of 20 consecutive title defenses for a middleweight champion when he does fight next.