Negotiations starting for Canelo vs. Golovkin immediate rematch

Boxingnews24.com

By Sean Jones: Negotiations have already begun for an immediate rematch between middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin and Saul “Canelo Alvarez for next May in 2018, according to ESPN. If an agreement can get made, then both fighters would stay out of the ring for the remainder of the year until they fight each other next May on HBO pay-per-view.

Canelo, 27, will be exercising the rematch clause in his contract with Golovkin. Canelo and Golden Boy Promotions have 3 weeks to exercise the rematch clause, but they’re already starting negotiations with Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler, according to Dan Rafael.

The Canelo-Gennady fight last Saturday night could pull in over 2 million buys on HBO pay-per-view, with a gate over $30 million.

Team Golovkin and Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy Promotions are interested in putting the rematch together. HBO wants an immediate rematch between the two fighters, as the interest in the Canelo-GGG fight is red-hot right now in the boxing world. It doesn’t make sense for either fighter to take a preliminary fight unless they can’t come to terms during the negotiations.

In that case, it would be Golovkin (37-0-1, 33 KOs) that would be taking a fight in December against possibly Miguel Cotto or Billy Joe Saunders. Canelo (49-1-2, 34 KOs) doesn’t wish to fight until next May on Cinco de Mayo.

Eric Gomez of Golden Boy is worried about Golovkin, 35, potentially losing if he were to take a fight in the meantime in December while he waits for the rematch against Canelo next May. Gomez feels that besides the risk of GGG getting beaten, he could suffer an injury as well that would wipe out the chance of staging the Canelo-Golovkin rematch next May. If Golovkin gets injured, then the rematch against Canelo would have to wait until September next year on the Mexican Independence Day Holiday weekend.

Golden Boy obviously wants to stage the Canelo vs. Gennady rematch on one of the huge Mexican holidays next year. That’s when Canelo brings in a lot of PPV buys passively just by having the fight on the holidays. He doesn’t even need to fight good opposition for him to bring in a lot of buys, as we saw in his fight against Liam Smith last September and his mismatch against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. last May. A year ago, Canelo fought welterweight Amir Khan on Cinco de Mayo and still brought in over 600,000 buys on HBO for what amounted to be a glorified mismatch. Having Golovkin as an opponent on Cinco de Mayo will certainly help bring in a huge amount of buys.

“I had conversations with [Golden Boy CEO] Oscar [De La Hoya] on Sunday and Monday, and we feel that’s the best thing to do, to go straight into a rematch,” Golden Boy executive Eric Gomez said to ESPN.com. “I would rather we do the rematch directly because I would hate for him take another fight and get injured or lose. It’s too risky. I would be against it, but I don’t control it. But, that said, based on my conversations with Tom, they would like to do an immediate rematch. I think the fight merits a rematch and we’ll see if it gets done.”

If Gomez and Golden Boy wanted to take advantage of the huge amount of interest from the boxing world in a rematch between Canelo and Golovkin, they would make the fight in December instead of waiting 8 months before staging a second fight between them. That’s nearly a year that the boxing public will need to wait for the second fight. It’s especially bad for Canelo, because he’s the one that has taken a huge hit by receiving a gift 12 round draw in a fight that he appeared to lose by an 8 rounds to 4 score.

The amount of boxing fans that thought Canelo won the fight last Saturday was extremely low. Lower still were the fans that thought Canelo rated a draw from the GGG fight. The fans saw Canelo losing the fight, and receiving some extremely strange scores with one judge giving the fight to Canelo by a 10 rounds to 2 score, and another judge scoring it as an even fight at 114-114. The referee that scored the fight a draw gave Canelo round 7, which was arguably the best round of the fight for Golovkin.

If the referee hadn’t given that round to Canelo, Golovkin would have won the fight. Trella and the other judge that scored it 118-110, Adalaide Byrd, seemed like they weren’t seeing the Canelo-Golovkin fight in an accurate manner. Even Byrd scored round 7 for Golovkin. Trella giving round 7 to Canelo is hard to understand unless he made a mistake when scoring the round by giving it to the wrong fighter.

I don’t think there’s too much risk of Golovkin losing if he fights in December against the likes of Miguel Cotto or Billy Joe Saunders. Those are easy fights for Golovkin. Where Golovkin could have problems is if he fought a rematch with Danny Jacobs or if he fought Jermall Charlo or Sergiy Derevyanchenko. Those would be risky fights, but not Saunders and Cotto. Those are easy fights for Golovkin. There’s more to risk in waiting for the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight to take place than there is for Golovkin to fight in December. By waiting, Canelo and Golden Boy will let the fan interest drop off by making the fans wait nearly 1 year before staging the rematch. 8 months is a long time to make the boxing fan wait, and I think the casual fans will have forgotten about the Golovkin vs. Canelo fight by that point.

“Obviously, we’re going to give Canelo some time off and we’ll start talking to him,” said Gomez. “I feel it was such a great fight it deserves a rematch.”

Canelo is only 27. Why does he need to wait? I could understand Canelo needing time to lick his wounds if he were older, and not in his prime, but that’s not the case. Canelo is at his best right now. He should be able to fight in December against Golovkin. It would be in Canelo’s best interest to fight Golovkin then rather than waiting for 8 months for a lot of the boxing fans o have forgotten about the fight.

Maybe that’s the whole idea by Canelo and Golden Boy. The longer the boxing fans have to wait before seeing the rematch; many of them will have forgotten how Golovkin was arguably robbed on the scorecards by 2 of the judges last Saturday. It hurts Canelo a heck of a lot more than it does Golovkin for him to wait. The longer the fight waits, the more time the disillusioned boxing fans have to stew on how Canelo was given a draw that he didn’t deserve in the Golovkin fight.

The fans had to wait nearly 3 years to see Canelo and Gennady fight each other, as Golden Boy wanted to wait for the fight to marinate all this time. The results of the fight last Saturday was unsatisfactory in the minds of the boxing fans. By the judges scoring it a 12 round draw, it’s as if the fight never took place. We know it did, but 2 of the judges produced unusual scores that didn’t reflect what happened in the Canelo and Gennady fight. The fans will now have another 8 months for the fight to marinate before the fight each other again, and that’s if it can get negotiated properly.

Here’s one the thing to keep in mind. Golovkin would have gotten a better financial deal in the rematch if he had beaten Canelo already. But the draw the judges gave Canelo means that it’s a do over with Golovkin likely stuck with the same financial deal as the first fight. It doesn’t take a genius to see that it’s a huge benefit to Canelo to have the same financial deal as last time, as he’s getting the lion’s share of the money for the Golovkin fight.

The judges scoring it a draw means Canelo will likely make another killing in getting the lion’s share once again. If the terms of the rematch are the same, then it’s a rotten deal for Golovkin that he wasn’t given the victory by the judges. There’s nothing Golovkin can do though. If he walks away and refuses the same financial deal that he had for the first fight, then he’ll have to accept a smaller payday fighting the other middleweights in the division like Billy Joe Saunders, Danny Jacobs and Jermall Charlo.

Canelo will make less money too, but he’s capable of pulling in 300,000 buys for his fights. There will always be a certain amount of Canelo fans that will want to pay to see him fight. He doesn’t need to fight Golovkin for him to get a decent payday. He’ll obviously make a lot more money fighting Golovkin than he would be getting stuck taking on dangerous guys like Jacobs, Charlo and Sergiy Derevyanchenko. If Golovkin is willing to stand firm that he deserves a better deal in the rematch, then he could do really well if he can get Canelo and Golden Boy to give him a larger split of the PPV upside. If the fight brings in over 2 million buys, it would bring Canelo a ton of money due to him having the much better split of the PPV revenue than Golovkin.

In Canelo ends up fighting someone else in May rather than Golovkin, he’ll be at great risk of losing the fight if he faces one of the good fighters in the middleweight division. There’s no demand for Canelo to fight Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. again, so that kind of limits his chances to make a lot of money fighting another over-the-hill fighter. Canelo would have to fight a good middleweight for him not to get criticized by the boxing fans. They would want Canelo to fight David Lemieux, Billy Joe Saunders, Jermall Charlo, Danny Jacobs or Sergiy Derevyanchenko. Those guys would give Canelo a lot of problems.