Canelo vs. Golovkin 2 Likely at T-Mobile, Vegas or MSG, NY

Boxingnews24.com

By Jeff Aranow: Eric Gomez of Golden Boy Promotions says the Saul Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady Golovkin 2 rematch will be taking place on May 5th either at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada or at Madison Square Garden in New York.

The venue will be decided once the contracts for the fight have been finalized. The venue is less complicated than getting the final items on the contract completed for the mega-fight between IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Golovkin and Canelo on HBO pay-per-view.

It’s perceived by some boxing fans that Golovkin will be given a better deal in terms of judges if the fight takes place in New York rather than in Las Vegas again. Golovkin has fought in New York 7 times in the last 6 years. In contrast, Golovkin has only fought in Las Vegas once, and that was in his controversial fight with Canelo on September 16 last year at the T-Mobile Arena.

For his part, Canelo has been fighting mostly in Las Vegas in the last 5 years. Canelo has fought in Las Vegas a whopping 9 times in his career. All total, Canelo has a 9 to 1 advantage over Golovkin in the number of times he’s fought in Las Vegas. As you can see, it’s a big advantage for Canelo to be fighting Golovkin in Las Vegas, because he means a lot to the city. Canelo brings in a lot of money to Vegas. Canelo brings in the money to Vegas like a giant wave. It makes sense for Golden Boy Promotions to want to bring Canelo back to that city, as he’s only lost once in all the years he’s fought there. Some feel that Canelo deserved a defeat not only in the GGG fight in Vegas, but also in his 2014 fight against Erislandy Lara in that city.

New York’s Madison Square Garden has made a big offer to stage the Canelo-GGG fight, says Gomez.

“Very strong, huge,” Gomez said to the latimes.com. “It is expensive being in New York — the overhead, the hotels — but those are the two leading contenders and once we get the contracts signed, we’ll get to work.”

The way that Gomez is talking about New York being expensive, he’s giving a pretty big hint that the Canelo vs. Golovkin rematch will wind up back at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. That’s good for Canelo, but maybe not so good for Golovkin if he the judges are like last time the two fought. Golovkin wasn’t given much credit by the judges for what he did. It’s not surprising why Golden Boy would want to have the second fight staged in Las Vegas. Things went well for Canelo the last time he was there in Vegas. He avoided a loss, and he got a rematch to get a second payday. It’s unclear what the terms would have been had Golovkin been given the win in the first fight. You’d have to believe that he would be getting a bigger cut of the revenue for the rematch under those circumstances. Negotiating from a point of having been given a draw is a lot different than negotiating from a standpoint of a win. The draw really hurt Golovkin in more ways than one.

If the second fight ends up in Las Vegas, Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler will give closer scrutiny to the judges that are assigned to the fight by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. Now that Golovkin is no longer knocking everyone out, it’s more important than ever that Loeffler make sure that only the best judges are selected for the Canelo-GGG rematch. Loeffler needs judges that aren’t coming into the fight with a history of controversial scores in important fights. If Loeffler had raised a fuss last time, he might have gotten better judges than the ones assigned by the Nevada Commission and the fight would have gone his way instead of it being scored a draw. Weeding a couple of the judges from last time Canelo and Golovkin fought could have led to a far different outcome.

It’s got to be tough for any judge that is assigned to the Canelo vs. Golovkin rematch. They obviously know now that their scores are going to be closely looked at by the boxing fans and the media. If they come up with oddball scoring like we saw from 2 of the judges for the first Canelo and Golovkin fight, it’s going to make them look bad in the eyes of the boxing fans.

“It’s going to be another great fight, so it’ll likely be a natural to do another rematch, but it’s not in the agreement,” Gomez said. “We want to concentrate on getting this [second Alvarez-Golovkin fight] done and then we can talk about a third fight later.”

There’s no way of knowing how many times the U.S boxing public will be interested in seeing Canelo and Golovkin fight each other. It would help if the rematch isn’t tainted this time by the judges. If the Canelo-GGG second fight is tainted by another controversial outcome due to the judging, then the boxing fans may lose interest in wanting to see the two of them face each other. If they feel that the judges aren’t going to score the fight in a fair manner, then the fans might choose to save their money and not purchase future Canelo-Golovkin fights.