Moments after Jermall Charlo knocked out Hugo Centeno Jr. to claim the interim WBC middleweight title he was staking his claim to the main prize in the division.
“Bring on GGG,” Charlo blasted the Showtime mic. “I don’t want to talk about it. Bring on GGG. Where is he? I’m ready! I’m ready, man!”
Just four years earlier, after knocking out Marco Antonio Rubio, Gennady Golovkin was calling out then-WBC world champ Miguel Cotto while also basking in the glow of a newly-acquired WBC interim belt.
In Golovkin’s case, the WBC worked doggedly to get the Kazakh KO machine to the full world title, trying to nudge Cotto into Triple G’s reach and then brokering step aside deals when Cotto pursued more lucrative fights. And they continued with their Golovkin advocacy when Canelo Alvarez beat Cotto for the WBC title, pushing so hard that they created a wedge between themselves and the angered Mexican star who was once their cash cow teacher’s pet.
One gets the feeling that the WBC will not be championing the cause of Charlo’s title shot as aggressively as they did Golovkin’s.
Members of Team Golovkin, as a matter of fact, are talking a lot like those who they claim avoided their fighter all those years, using the same logic to dodge Charlo that was used to dodge Triple G.
“[He earned the shot] by fighting who? What does that mean that he’s a mandatory? That he deserves a shot? He’s got to earn his shot,” Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez said during an interview with BS, just one month before his fighter’s draw with Canelo. “We sat for Felix Sturm for two years. We sat for Sergio Martinez for two years. These guys all of a sudden think that they deserve a shot at the winner of Golovkin and Canelo—they’re crazy. They’ve got to earn it.
“[Charlo] needs to stay busy, stay fighting and stay relevant,” he continued. “Because when the time comes to fight the people have to know him.”
One could go back and ask aloud whether many of Golovkin’s opponents have actually, as Sanchez says, “earned their shot.” Not Willie Monroe Jr. Not welterweight Kell Brook. Not Nobuhiro Ishida. Not Osumanu Adama. (One could go on and on.) It could also be argued that Golovkin, himself, had not “earned” his shot when the media first began to circulate the talking points about the elites avoiding him.
But savvy boxing fans know the reality behind Sanchez’s words.
Boxing is just as much a game of risk management as it is a game of strategies and nuts and bolts stylistic match-ups. And nobody—not even fearsome man-beasts who are billed as only caring about kicking ass and delivering “big drama shows”—are above risk/reward calculations.
Simply put, there’s not enough money there to justify taking a risk on facing the young, aggressive, heavy-handed Charlo. This is no different than Sergio Martinez and then Cotto deciding that Golovkin, at the time, was too much risk for too little reward.
The fairytale myths constructed over the realities of the sport only hold water for those not wanting to know or acknowledge the truth.
Charlo will get his big fight when there’s a substantial pot of gold attached to the risk of fighting him—just as Golovkin eventually got his big payday against Alvarez.
Boxing is the hurt game, the cruelest sport, modern day gladiator battle, and the ultimate lie detector—but, first and foremost, it’s a business.
Thoughts?
