De La Hoya: If Golovkin wants Canelo trilogy fight, we have a set price for his worth

Boxingnews24.com

By Sean Jones: Oscar De La Hoya has show cannon fire across the bow of Gennady Golovkin’s ship on Friday, telling him that if he wants a third fight against Golden Boy Promotions star Saul Canelo Alvarez, he’ll have to agree to the set offer that they have for him.

De La Hoya doesn’t spell it out, but now that Canelo has been given a huge $365 million deal with DAZN, he doesn’t need to give what Golovkin is asking for in the negotiations for the third fight. Canelo doesn’t need to ever fight Golovkin again period, because he’s got enough money to fight whoever he wants.

Golovkin (38-1-1, 34 KOs) was successful in pushing hard to get 45 percent of the purse for the second fight against Canelo on September 15 after agreeing to a 70-30 deal for the first fight last year in September 2017. Golovkin, 36, was going to get 35% of the purse for the rematch with Canelo until the Mexican star tested positive for clenbuterol last February. Angry about Canelo’s positive test, unhappy with missing out on the rematch for last May and subsequently being stripped of his IBF middleweight title, Golovkin held out for a 55-45 deal for the September 15 rematch, which was more than what Golden Boy and Canelo wanted to pay him, but they had no choice because it was the biggest fight available for the Mexican star at the time. Canelo defeated Golovkin in their rematch by a controversial 12 round majority decision at the same venue, T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, and now Golden Boy plans on using that win to get a better deal for the trilogy fight.

“Eric [Gomez] is talking to Tom Loeffler,” De La Hoya said to Fighthub about negotiations for a trilogy fight between Canelo Alvarez and Golovkin.“Canelo right now is moving up to 168, something Golovkin never wanted to do for some strange reason. If Canelo wins December 15, he’s going to come back down to 160 and challenge the best once again,” De La Hoya said.

De La Hoya mentioned that when Canelo moves back down to 160, World Boxing Council interim middleweight champion Jermall Charlo is a possibility for him. It’s unclear whether De La Hoya is serious about wanting to make the fight between Canelo and Charlo, because the Mexican star has been taking a lot of flak ever since the news of his fight with Rocky Fielding was announced. The boxing public thinks Canelo is afraid of defending his WBC title against Charlo, who is his mandatory now that he’s holding the WBC belt. The WBC tried to push the job on Golovkin to face Charlo instead of Canelo, but that didn’t work because he’s not going to do him a favor by fighting him. It’s believed that when Canelo does move back down to 160, he’s going to defend against David Lemieux, because it’s a soft fight for him where he does need to worry abut losing. Lemieux is the same type of fight that Fielding is for Canelo. There’s no worry about losing because of how slow his hands are and how limited his boxing skills are.

“If Golovkin wants to fight, I already have in my mind a set price of what he’s going to be worth,” De La Hoya said in giving GGG a take it or leave it ultimatum about how the negotiations are going to play out for a rematch with Canelo Alvarez. “If he [Golovkin] doesn’t want to fight him for a price we say, then go fight somebody else. I can’t say [what the set offer is for GGG], but look, Canelo is happy where he’s at,” De La Hoya said.

The only blame you can put on Golovkin for his troubles with Canelo was his mistake in agreeing to fight Canelo twice in Las Vegas, Nevada. After the first controversial decision last year in September 2017, Golovkin and Loeffler should have put it together and recognized that they would have little chance of ever beating Alvarez in Las Vegas. If they had refused to go back to Las Vegas, then the fight likely would have ended up in New York where there’s a good chance that GGG would have won the fight. The same fight might have been scored differently in a different city and state.

What De La Hoya is describing isn’t a negotiation between Golden Boy and Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler in the real sense. What De La Hoya is describing is a one-way deal with Golden Boy giving Golovkin a take it or leave it offer, and treating him like a lower level fighter. When you get a promoter that takes that type of stance in negotiations, you have to ask yourself if you need the money that badly for you to accept less than what you’re worth. If Golovkin is good, then he can walk away and finish his career fighting other guys. Canelo can do his thing, fighting the likes of Fielding, David Lemieux and Gary ‘Spike’ O’Sullivan. It’s a little too far-fetched to believe that Golden Boy would match Canelo against Jermall Charlo, Demetrius Andrade or Daniel Jacobs, because those guys have talent, they’re huge, powerful and they’re young. In other words, they’re kryptonite for a fighter like the 5’8″ Canelo. A loss for Canelo against one or more of those fighters would be a disaster for his DAZN deal, because the subscribers wouldn’t flock in like originally thought when he first inked the 11-fight, $365 million deal with the company.

“Golovkin, go do your thing. When you’re ready, knock on our door, and we’ll be ready for you,” De La Hoya said.

Golovkin will be fighting in February or March against possibly WBA ‘regular’ middleweight champion Ryota Murata (14-1, 11 KOs) in Tokyo, Japan. That’s a fight that Tom Loeffler is talking about wanting to mmake for Golovkin in the first three months of 2019. Matchroom Boxing USA/DAZN promoter Eddie Hearn, who has an eight-year, $1 billion deal with DAZN said that he thinks that his fighter former WBA middleweight champion Daniel Jacobs has a good chance of being the guy that Canelo fights next May in 2019. Hearn seems to be pretty sure of himself with the way he’s talking. It’s possible that Hearn has already been in talks with De La Hoya about punting the Canelo-Jacobs fight together in May 2019, as long as Jacobs wins his October 27 fight against Sergiy Derevyanchenko to win the vacant International Boxing Federation 160 lb title at Madison Square Garden in New York.

”Obviously, he tried to steal some of Caenlo’s thunder,” De La Hoya said about Floyd Mayweather Jr. taking shots at Canelo on social media this week.“He [Mayweather] couldn’t help himself. He had to crawl out from under his rock, and make some noise. But look, he’s retired. He’s either hurting for attention or hurting for money. I strongly feel Canelo is the man right now. He’s the highest paid athlete in the world, and we move on and go forward and continue with our business,” De La Hoya said.

De La Hoya seems to be really bothered about Mayweather taking some shots at Canelo on his Instagram account this week, saying that it wouldn’t have mattered if Canelo was using any PEDs when he fought him in 2013, because he would have still dominated him. Mayweather also made light of Canelo’s $365 million deal, pointing out that he makes that kind of money per fight, and isn’t in need of a company to offer him that kind of long-term deal.