De La Hoya talks negative on Canelo-Golovkin negotiations

Boxingnews24.com

By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya is promising the fans the negotiations for the May 5th rematch between Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin and Saul Canelo Alvarez will be completed soon, albeit if Triple G agrees to the fight. Golovkin (37-0-1, 33 KOs) must agree to the rematch, according to De La Hoya.

In other words, Golovkin must accept the contract terms for the rematch to take place. If Golovkin doesn’t accept the contract offer, it will give De La Hoya and Golden Boy an excuse to move on without risking a loss for their prime money maker Canelo.

De La Hoya and Golden Boy Promotions president Eric Gomez appear to be playing good cop bad cop in the negotiations for the Golovkin-Canelo fight. Gomez is giving a nice message, saying that the fight negotiations are almost done. De La Hoya’s message is pessimistic, saying that GGG has to agree to the fight. That is obviously is code for Golovkin needs to agree to the contract offer given to him.
Here’s De La Hoya’s negative message on the Canelo-GGG negotiations:

“@Canelo vs @GGGBoxing is not done and not close to being done considering reports. I promise all the fans it will get done soon IF and when @GGGBoxing agrees to the rematch.”

What De La Hoya isn’t saying is that the GGG-Canelo fight negotiations will get done soon, if Golovkin agrees to the contract that Golden Boy wants him to sign. You can bet that contract is heavily slanted in Canelo’s favor with the site likely being back at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, and the purse split in his favor as well. Placing the rematch back in Las Vegas makes sense from a monetary standpoint.

The Golovkin-Canelo rematch is probably going to make a lot more money in Las Vegas than it will in New York City, where they’ll likely be bigger taxes and insurance issues that will cut into the money that can be made. There’s also not a large Mexican community in New York like there is in Las Vegas. Canelo’s boxing fans would have to travel farther to see him fight if the fight takes place in New York. Golovkin wasn’t in an ideal situation fighting in Las Vegas last September in his fight with Canelo. Golovkin’s fans are largely in the East Coast. Fighting in Vegas put Golovkin in a situation where he had to fight in front of Canelo’s fans in their fight last September. If Golovkin must fight Canelo in Las Vegas once again, it’s not fair to him, especially with what occurred with the controversial decision from their first fight.

Here’s Golden Boy President Eric Gomez’s more positive message on the Golovkin-Canelo rematch in an interview with Lance Pugmire of the latimes.com:

“We’ve exchanged contracts. We’ve gone through three revisions. I’m hoping for the last revision [Thursday night or Friday] and we’ll see. All the major points have been worked out. There’s some details that are important, but they’re not the major points.”

Gomez saying that Canelo agrees to the contract for the fight puts the pressure on Golovkin, as it makes him look like the bad guy that is preventing the fight from happening if he doesn’t cave in and agree to the fight too. If Golden Boy Promotions really don’t want to make the rematch, then one way of getting out of it without criticism from the boxing fans is to have De La Hoya and Gomez saying that Canelo has agreed on the deal but Golovkin hasn’t. Golden Boy can then move Canelo away to a safer patch to continue matching him against safer fighters for easy PPV money like we’ve seen in the past in his fights against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., Amir Khan and Liam Smith.

Canelo’s loyal boxing fans are willing to purchase his fights on PPV against over-matched opposition. They don’t seem to care that Canelo isn’t fighting the best. They’re still willing to purchase his fights. One reason for that is Canelo has a lot of casual boxing fans that aren’t well versed on who the better fighters are in boxing. So, if Golden Boy matches Canelo against someone like Amir Khan or Chavez Jr. on PPV, his fans likely assume that he’s facing the best rather than over-the-hill fighters from the past. We saw Canelo fight James Kirkland and Alfredo Angulo in the last 4 years. At one time, Angulo and Kirkland were good fighters. They were no longer good fighters by the time Canelo fought them. They were fighters that were over-the-hill, and yet Canelo’s fans still eagerly watched him fight those guys.

It should be interesting to see if Golovkin and his promoter Tom Loeffler agree to the contract that Golden Boy Promotions want them to agree to for the Canelo fight. What happens if GGG and Loeffler don’t agree to what Golden Boy wants? I think it’s obvious Canelo will move on and fight someone else, and wait for Golovkin to eventually relent and agree to what he and Golden Boy wants him to face him again. If Golovkin folds, he might get an even worse deal for the Canelo fight. That be sad for Golovkin, and great for Canelo.

The best way for Golovkin and Loeffler to negotiate with Golden Boy is for them to be willing to walk away from the bargaining table if they don’t get the deal that they want. Without the Golovkin payday, Canelo will be stuck having to decide whether he wants to face the best fighters in the middleweight division or take the softer jobs like Ryota Murata, David Lemieux, Gary O’Sullivan, Rob Brant, Jason Quigley and Hassan N’Dam. If Canelo fights those guys, he might lose popularity steadily in the same way Manny Pacquiao lost popularity after he stopped fighting the guys the boxing fans wanted to see him fight in the last 2 years of his career. The fans forget about fighters when they stop facing the best.

Golovkin-Canelo is the fight the boxing fans want to see, but it might not happen unless one of the two guys is willing to take the worse deal. It would be great if the two fighters could agree to a deal that left both satisfied, but it probably won’t work out that way. Canelo will likely use his A-side position to hammer a deal that plays well for him but not so well for Golovkin.