Golovkin: “Canelo can’t look into my eyes because he knows I’m correct in everything”

By Boxing News - 06/19/2018 - Comments

Image: Golovkin: “Canelo can’t look into my eyes because he knows I’m correct in everything”

By Dan Ambrose: Saul Canelo Alvarez doesn’t wish to meet with Gennady Golovkin for a Face off program with HBO to publicize their September 15 rematch on pay-per-view at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Morever, Canelo doesn’t want to take part in the joint fight kick off news conference to drive ticket and pay-per-view sales for the fight.

Needless to say, having Canelo only take part in the required press conferences and weigh-in will cripple the promotion and limit the publicity the rematch receives. Golovkin, 36, thinks the real reason why Canelo (49-1-2, 34 KOs) doesn’t want to take part in the Face Off program is because he can’t look him in the eyes after everything that’s taken place, from the controversial 12 round draw of their fight last year to the two failed tests for clenbuterol last February. Golovkin says Canelo knows what he’s been saying about him is right and he can’t look him in the eyes now.

“I think he cannot look into my eyes because he knows I’m correct,” Golovkin said to the latimes.com in talking about his belief that Canelo looked to cheat by taking clenbuterol earlier this year. “I agreed to do 45 because I thought this is exactly how much I was worth.”

Golden Boy Promotions vice president Eric Gomez says Canelo initially said he didn’t want to take part in anything with GGG until the week of the fight, but he realizes that he’s going to need to for the promotion to work for the September 15 rematch on HBO PPV at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Gomez says he thinks something can be worked out to where both fighters are together to help promote the fight.

“Canelo originally told me, ‘I don’t want anything to do with [Golovkin] until fight week,’ but he also understands the business, so we’re going to see if we can make it work,” Gomez said to the latimes.com.

Not having Canelo meet with Golovkin until the week of the fight is going to be a real negative to the promotion. For the Canelo-GGG II fight to eclipse the 1.3 million pay-per-view buys the first fight pulled in, Canelo will need to work with Golovkin to help attract interest in the fight. Golovkin can’t do it alone all by himself. Even with Eric Gomez, Golden Boy CEO Oscar De La Hoya, trainer Abel Sanchez and promoter Tom Loeffler working to help promote the fight, they won’t be able to take up the slack for what’s lost by Canelo not taking part in the promotion of the event until the final week of the fight.

Golovkin isn’t likely going to call Canelo names and label him a drug cheat when he meets with him for the promotion of the fight. If anything, Golovkin will just look at Canelo with a look of disgust on his face due to him having tested positive for clenbuterol twice in the past. Canelo has got to put up with that for the promotion to bring in bigger PPV numbers than the previous fight last September. That fight brought in a live gate of $27 million. The rematch could do more if the tickets are priced higher. The fight is expected to sellout but it obviously won’t be a good thing for the promotion if Canelo isn’t going to work with Golovkin by meeting with him for the kickoff press conference and for the Face Off programs.

Clenbuterol is a substance that some athletes use to help improve their stamina and endurance for their athletic competitions. Canelo maintains that he unknowingly took the clenbuterol when he ate contaminated beef in Mexico. He tested negative for a hair follicle test, which Golden Boy believes proved that he didn’t intentionally used the clenbuterol. Golovkin believes different. Both fighters will be

tested by VADA in the run up to their fight on September 15. Canelo cannot afford to have any more mishaps with him testing positive for performance enhancing drugs, as a third positive test would be disastrous for the rematch.

Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez says he was firm with his asking price of a 55-45 split for the rematch with Canelo, and he was willing to walk away from a fight that could give him a $40 million payday. Golovkin would have fought WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders if Canelo and Golden Boy hadn’t agreed to the purse split that he wanted for the fight. De La Hoya says he came up with the money out of his own pocket to help Golovkin get the money he wanted by digging down in his own picket for several million to help get him to agree.

”I actually came out with my own money to bridge the gap and make this fight happen,” De La Hoya said to TMZ.com. ”GGG wanted a bigger piece of the pie. It was a matter of a few million dollars. I couldn’t get it from Canelo’s side because he was going to stick to his guns, so I had to come up with the difference,” De La Hoya said.

De La Hoya was the one that was giving GGG a 24 hour deadline to agree to the fight. It’s interesting that De La Hoya now is saying that he had to personally come up with a “few million dollars” to help get the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight over the finish line. It obviously suggests that the 24 hour deadline was just a strategy to try and create pressure on GGG to get him to agree to the 42 ½ percent split that they wanted him to agree to for the September 15 fight with Canelo. With all the money the rematch will make in terms of ticket sales and pay-per-view buys on HBO, De La Hoya will likely make the money back that he paid to help get Golovkin to agree to the split. With that said, it’s disappointing that Canelo is reluctant to meet with Golovkin for the news announcement of the fight and the Face Off program to create more interest from the boxing fans in the Canelo-Golovkin II rematch. The fight can be bigger than the first one if they promote it the right way by putting the two fighters together as often as possible to let the fans know how much they dislike each other now. There was too much mutual respect between Canelo and GGG last time they fought. Neither of them wanted to trash talk, and that left it to De La Hoya, Gomez and Abel Sanchez to come up with the majority of the sound bites. This time it would be so much better if Golden Boy could convince Canelo to meet with Golovkin for the promotion of the fight.