By Dan Ambrose: Gennadiy Golovkin and DAZN are restructuring their deal before GGG faces Kamil Szeremeta next month on December 18th. Mike Coppinger is reporting the news of IBF middleweight champion Golovkin (40-1-1, 35 KOs) and DAZN restructuring his six-fight, $100 million deal with the company.
GGG is finally returning to the ring after a long period of negotiations with DAZN. It’s been 13 months since Golovkin last fought in October 2019 in defeating Sergiy Derevyanchenko by a controversial decision in New York in a fight shown on DAZN.
When you’re Golovkin’s age, you don’t like to miss out on a year of your career, but it looks like he had no choice due to the negotiations with DAZN and the pandemic.
GGG needs to upgrade his opposition
Golovkin, 38, will be taking a pay cut. He’s currently getting $15 million per fight, which is a lot of money for him to be fighting guys like Steve Rolls, Szeremeta, and Derevyanchenko. Those are not marquee names, and it’s unclear whether DAZN had big expectations of Golovkin facing more popular fighters.
Golovkin destroyed the 35-year-old Rolls in 2019 shortly after signing with DAZN. It’s anyone’s guess why DAZN agreed to let Golovkin face Rolls rather than insisting on him fighting a better opponent that would bring in new subscribers.
DAZN wanted Canelo Alvarez to take a pay cut, but he left the company after initiating a lawsuit. Canelo had signed an 11-fight, $365 million deal with DAZN in 2018.
Interestingly, the former Golden Boy Promotions star Canelo will be fighting on DAZN next month against WBA super-middleweight champion Callum Smith on December 19th in San Antonio, Texas.
DAZN have GGG fighting Szeremeta on December 18th at a still to be determined location. Canelo will follow a day later on December 19th against Callum Smith. That’s a good one-two punch for DAZN.
It makes sense for Canelo and GGG to fight a day apart in December if the two wind up meeting in a trilogy in May 2021 on DAZN. The streaming giant has been interested in seeing Canelo and Golovkin fight since they signed both of them.
Unfortunately, Canelo never got around to meeting with Golovkin for their third fight, even though it would have made the Mexican star a lot of money.
Canelo vs. Golovkin III will be huge in 2021
It’s hard for the average person to try and understand why Canelo wouldn’t take the fight with Golovkin when it would have made him so much money, but he’s already wealthy, so it was less important to him.
If Canelo loses his fight against Callum Smith on December 19th, that will ruin any chance of him facing Golovkin next May.
Canelo hasn’t said that he’ll take the fight with Golovkin, but if he gets beaten by Smith (27-0, 19 KOs), it would be academic that the fight won’t happen.
Golovkin will have three fights left with DAZN after he takes care of Szeremeta on December 18th. Hopefully, for DAZN’s sake, Golovkin uses his last three fights wisely and doesn’t continue to face no-name opposition like we’ve been seeing from him.