By Sean Jones: Gennady Golovkin has backed own from his 50-50 request for parity in his rematch with Saul Canelo Alvarez, according to promoter Tom Loeffler. He says Golovkin (38-0-1, 34 KOs) is willing to take a 55-45 split for the September 15 rematch with the 27-year-old Canelo. Nevertheless, Golden Boy Promotions president Eric Gomez isn’t sure whether Canelo and Golden Boy CEO Oscar De La Hoya will want to continue negotiating with GGG, as they’ve already moved on and are looking to put together a fight against former IBF middleweight champion Daniel ‘Miracle Man’ Jacobs for September 15.
Golden Boy has already made an offer to Jacobs, which has been rejected by his promoter Eddie Hearn, who says he knows the value of his fighter and what the fight will bring on HBO PPV.
“Gennady has agreed to come off his 50-50 demand,” Loeffler said to ESPN.com. “Gennady wants the rematch with Canelo regardless of what Oscar says…He will come down to 55-45, which makes Canelo the A side. It will be Canelo making 55 percent in a rematch against GGG, which will be much bigger than the first fight, was for sure,” Loeffer said.
A purse split of 55-45 is close to the 60-40 that De La Hoya reportedly has offered Golovkin for the September 15 rematch. GGG and Loeffler previously agreed to a 65-35 split for the May 5 rematch, but Golovkin decided that the offer was too low, considering all the things that had transpired with Canelo twice testing positive for clenbuterol.
Golovkin, 36, was stripped of his IBF middleweight title on Wednesday after he chose not to agree in writing to face International Boxing Federation 160lb mandatory Sergiy Derevyanchenko. Losing the IBF title is not a big deal if Golovkin can get the lucrative
Loeffler doesn’t mind what De La Hoya says about Canelo moving on to the Jacobs fight, as he’s negotiating still with Eric Gomez. However, it’s still going to be up to Canelo and De La Hoya if they want to agree to come back to the GGG fight and agree to the 55-45 split that Golovkin wants. Canelo will still be getting the lion’s share of the profits for the rematch with Triple G. It just won’t be nearly as much as the 70-30 split that Canelo got for the previous fight against Golovkin on September 16 last year at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
If Canelo and De La Hoya are willing to walk away from the negotiations over the 5 percent difference from the 60-40 split that they were recently offering to Golovkin, it’s going to be a major drop off for Alvarez in money if he stubbornly refuses to agree to the 55-45 split and instead faces Jacobs. That’s a toss-up fight for Canelo, as Jacobs is a huge middleweight with power, speed, experience and mobility.
The only two fighters that Jacobs has lost to during his pro career were Eastern European pressure fighters Golovkin and Dmitry Pirog. Canelo isn’t Eastern European and he’s not a pressure fighter. He’s a counter puncher, and Jacobs has always done well against those types of fighters. Jacobs is almost unbeatable against shorter fighters, and the 5’8” Canelo is a lot shorter than the 5’11 ½” Jacobs. So, if Canelo decides he doesn’t want to fight Golovkin now, he could ultimately be sorry he made that decision.
Eric Gomez says he’ll be speaking with De La Hoya about the new 55-45 offer from Golovkin and Loeffler, and he in turn will speak directly to Canelo Alvarez to see if they agree to it. De La Hoya recently increased the 65-35 offer to Golovkin to 60-40, but he wanted a 50-50 split. It’s unclear what will happen if Canelo refuses to give Golovkin the 55-45 split that he’s asking for. Will Golovkin back down
from the 55-45 split or stand firm and choose to walk away from the negotiations to face another opponent like WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders. If not Saunders, Golovkin can always attempt to put together a fight against Derevyanchenko, although I don’t know why he would. The IBF really put GGG in a tough predicament when they wanted him to face Derevyanchenko on 3 weeks’ notice after Canelo dropped out of the May 5th fight. It might be better for Golovkin to move on and face someone else and forget about the IBF belt permanently. Golovkin can make a lot more money if he can face WBA World middleweight belt holder Ryota Murata next or his WBC mandatory challenger Jermall Charlo. I’m not sure who excited GGG is in facing the unbeaten Charlo (27-0, 21 KOs), as that’s a tough but winnable fight for him. Charlo is arguably the second best middleweight in the division behind Golovkin.
De La Hoya says that he’ll look to continue negotiations with Golovkin for May of 2019 for the rematch with Canelo. If that’s the case, it’ll have been 1 ½ years since the first fight. If the objective for De La Hoya and Golden Boy is to age GGG as much as possible before letting him face Canelo a second time, then delaying the fight until 2019 will help him accomplish that goal. I don’t know if it’ll work though. Golovkin is still fighting at an extremely high level, and his much better stamina and conditioning than Alvarez will prove to be a problem no matter how many years Golden boy delays the fight.
“He’s stubborn and wanting 50-50 and it’s not going to happen,” De La Hoya said to ESPN earlier this week on Tuesday. “The Canelo train has left the station. So there’s a deal on the table for Daniel Jacobs to fight Sept. 15 against Canelo.”
That deal that De La Hoya speaks of for Jacobs to fight Canelo on September 15 has already been turned down by Eddie Hearn. Hearn isn’t going to agree to chump change for Jacobs to fight Canelo, especially if it’s a flat fee or a low 80-20 or 90-10 purse split. If all Golden Boy were willing to offer Golovkin was a 70-30 split for the first fight with Canelo, it’s likely that Jacobs was only offered 20 percent to fight the Mexican star. That’s just too low. If Golden Boy seriously wants Jacobs and aren’t just using him as a pawn to get Golovkin to drop his asking price.