Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya finally came out and said he doesn’t plan on letting his golden goose Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (45-1-1, 32 KOs) face IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs) in his next fight after his bout next Saturday night against WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (40-4, 33 KOs) on November 21st.
De La Hoya says he wants to wait a year to a year and a half before he gives the green light to the 25-year-old Canelo to face the 33-year-old Golovkin. De La Hoya thinks that by letting the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight build over time, it’ll be a bigger fight once they do eventually face each other in the future.
De La Hoya acknowledges that it’s a risky thing for him to wait on the Canelo-Golovkin fight, because one or both of them could lose before they meet up with each other in the future, but he’s willing to take that risk.
As bad as Canelo has looked in fights against Floyd Mayweather Jr, Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara, it’s going to be harder for Canelo to keep winning than it’ll be for Golovkin, who has dominated everyone he’s faced during his career with the exception of Kassim Ouma.
“It’s interesting to see how long we’re going to take to build, the need for it to marinate just a bit,” De La Hoya said to Reuters. “I like my meat medium rare. I’m not a guy who likes to overcook my meat. In the meantime, Triple G (Golovkin) is now fighting with tough guys, Canelo is fighting with tough guys. They might lose, they might win. That’s the risk we have to take. The vision, the game plan, is to have them meet, sooner than later.”
It works in Canelo’s favor for De La Hoya to delay matching him up against the older 33-year-old Golovkin. Right now, Golovkin is in his prime and looks unbeatable. But in another two years, Golovkin will be 35, and it’s quite probable that he won’t be as good as he is now. De La Hoya needs to get as much of an edge for Canelo as possible for him to have a chance of beating Golovkin.
Canelo has already said that Golovkin will need to agree to a catch-weight of 155lbs before he’ll agree to fight him because Canelo doesn’t feel that he’s a middleweight yet. If Canelo is still talking about the need for a catch-weight of 155lbs in two years from now, then you’ve got to figure that he’s not feeling confident about his chances of winning.
It’s already bad that he needs to wait two years before he faces Gokovkin, because that plays into the younger Canelo’s hands by waiting out the 33-year-ol Golovkin.
If Canelo can get past Cotto next Saturday night in Las Vegas, Nevada, then De La Hoya might choose to match Canelo against WBO 147lb champion Tim Bradley at a catch-weight of 155lbs if they can negotiate the fight. Bradley’s promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank is interested in the fight, and Bradley likes the idea of facing Canelo. It’s a fight that HBO would probably like because it’s one that would sell on pay-per-view, even though it would be seen as a mismatch in the eyes of a lot of hardcore boxing fans.
The casual fans probably wouldn’t see it as a mismatch, because they wouldn’t know about the huge disparity in weight between Bradley and Canelo until the two of them get inside the ring with one another. Once they see how much heavier and bigger the 5’9” Canelo is compared to the 5’6” Bradley, it’ll be too late because they will have already ordered the fight on PPV.
It’s a safe fight for Canelo, and it’ll keep him winning for a little while longer. What De La Hoya needs to do is make sure he keeps Canelo away from guys like Tureano Johnson, Jermall Charlo and Demetrius Andrade, because those guys would have a very good chance of beating Canelo and maybe even knocking him out.
Article courtesy of Boxing News 24