Waiting for Golovkin vs. Canelo. Losing respect for De La Hoya (long read)
Posted: 16 Sep 2016, 09:42
A short while ago I wrote a piece in my native language (Danish) about the possible GGG-Canelo match-up, De La Hoya’s role in this affair, Canelo’s diminishing popularity etc.
I thought it might interest others than a small group of Danish readers, so I translated it into English (quickly: so don’t kill me for bad language or grammar). It’s written just before GGG vs. Brook for the website Sportfortalt.dk, which I co-run. Feel free to disagree with my arguments. In fact, I hope some do.
While we’re still waiting for Golovkin vs. Canelo – and losing respect for De La Hoya in the meantime
Boxing fans around the world are craving the match up between Gennady Golovkin and Saul ”Canelo” Alvarez. No deal has been struck yet and that’s primarily affecting Canelo’s popularity. ’Sport fortalt’ takes a look at the reasons why Canelo is turning into a boxing laughingstock.
The biggest possible match-up in current world boxing is still awaited.
The fight between Kazakhstan’s Gennady Golovkin and Mexico’s Saul ”Canelo” Alvarez is still without a date, and boxing fans will just have to trust the two side’s alleged willingness to negotiate.
But while the fight inside the ropes is without a victor, it is becoming increasingly clear that Golovkin is winning big in the “fight” for public sympathy.
Canelo does have his big and loyal fan base, but the mood seems to be turning against the Mexican hope among most neutral boxing fans.
In online forums, Youtube-videos and in reporter’s questions, a growing opinion is reflected: Canelo is currently cutting corners in his boxing career.
A stubborn insistence on fighting at catch weights, repeated fights against lighter opponents (weight-wise), and the absence of a Golovkin-fight are all contributing factors to the red-haired’s diminishing popularity.
The reasons behind Golovkin’s superiority in the image-battle between the two are, however, not necessarily Canelo’s own fault entirely.
In the battle for public and press approval, the weak link rather seems to be Canelo’s promoter –former top boxer Oscar De La Hoya.
Not so golden promotion
The Golden Boy as De La Hoya was called in his active career, and as he now calls his promotion company, has Canelo as the main product.
And that product is indeed worth protecting. Despite being only 26 years old, the redheaded Mexican has already been among the sport’s most prolific names for a small handful of years.
With their management of Canelo’s career, De La Hoya and the Canelo-camp does, nonetheless, make it hard to embrace the otherwise sympathetic and talented young boxing phenomenon.
The blame in this instance should primarily be directed towards De La Hoya and Golden Boy – at least if one looks at what they say themselves.
Even though promoters, managers, PR people etc. traditionally shroud boxing in smokescreen, Golden Boy is in fact quite open about the reasons as to why Canelo’s career is being managed as it is.
In the article ”The Building of Canelo” from the July issue of Ring Magazine, Golden Boy president Eric Gomez explains the ”measured risk”-thinking that dictates the company’s management of Canelo’s career.
Every Canelo bout entails a natural amount of risk, but it’s being carefully measured every time, Gomez explains – with the same kind of thinking that make insurance companies rich, writes Ring Magazine in its article.
And this is exactly one of Golden Boy’s most apparent problems in the ”image-battle” against Golovkin.
Boxing is hence rarely interesting when the main players act like insurance companies.
The Golden Boy president is aware of this and adds among other things:
”When you´re developing a fighter you get to a certain point and then you have to turn them loose to sink or swim.”
That “certain point” should have been reached a long time ago for Canelo. But at the moment Golden Boy doesn’t seem to want to let Canelo swim as long as Golovkin is lurking in the deep waters.
With Canelo’s status, talent and record, his reputation is suffering badly as a consequence.
They main problem for Canelo in this relation seems to Golden Boy’s absolute dependence on him.
After the former CEO Richard Schaefer left the company in 2014, Golden Boy was almost left in ruins. De La Hoya sued Schaefer for deliberately having let boxer’s contracts run out so that Schaefer could bring them with him to boxing’s mysterious lord, the shy businessman Al Haymon.
All of this while De La Hoya was checking in and out of rehab – letting his business run dangerously close to the edge of the abyss.
As De La Hoya – in his own words – got back on his feet again, he was more or less left with Canelo as his company’s only source of income. That is, very roughly speaking, how things still are, and De La Hoya therefore has an obvious interesting in protecting his money boy carefully.
Golden Boy does have names such as Jorge Linares, Francisco Vargas, Sadam Ali, Bernard Hopkins and David Lemieux to fall back on, but none of them are anywhere close to the value of Canelo.
”We know what he means to our company. He’s our franchise,” says Eric Gomez to Ring Magazine and notes how there’s an enormous pressure on the whole cooperation every time Canelo enters the ring.
Erislandy Lara as an example
One of the most obvious arguments as to why it’s Golden Boy putting the brakes on Canelo, is found in the list of his choice of prior opponents – especially illustrated by the choice to step up against Cuba’s Erislandy Lara in 2014.
Erislandy Lara has thus to be considered as one of the least attractive opponents in boxing all together – if one measures risk against reward. Lara is an extremely talented boxer who’s style – just like countryman Guillermo Rigondeaux – just doesn’t seem to be significantly appreciated by the crucial American boxing audience.
In terms of Golden Boy’s ”measured risk”, Erislandy Lara should therefore have been way to dangerous for Canelo.
At the time, Canelo came of his defeat to Floyd Mayweather less than 12 months before, and Golden Boy didn’t want any piece of Lara.
”There was no way I wanted that fight. He was another mover,” says Eric Gomez with reference to Lara’s Mayweather-characteristics.
But Canelo overruled his promoters and took the fight – and an eventual extremely close split decision.
Golden Boy had otherwise build Canelo’s career slowly with fights against fading, but recognizable, names such as Carlos Baldomir, Matthew Hatton, Kermit Cintron and Shane Mosley.
Classic career-handling.
The slow progress has hence been interrupted the times Canelo himself has stepped in and disregarded the insurance mathematics and insisted on bouts against Austin Trout, Floyd Mayweather and Erislandy Lara – three fights that Golden Boy all tried to prevent, Eric Gomez admits.
The 88-year-old Hall of Fame-promoter Don Chargin, who acts as a mentor to De La Hoya and Golden Boy, describes Canelo as ”a little different than most guys” in this instance.
”Most guys you bring along and they want easier fights but Canelo really wanted to fight the best. It was Canelo who insisted on the Mayweather fight, when Golden Boy wanted to wait, which would have been right from a promotor’s standpoint. He’s the one who wanted Trout when nobody wanted to fight Trout,” he says – again to Ring Magazine.
But if Canelo apparently insists on fighting the best, you’ll have to ask why he doesn’t overrule Golden Boy these days and demand a fight against Golovkin.
The reason is – possibly – that Canelo has reached the same conclusion as most other people: The risk of loosing to Golovkin is considerably larger than it was against Lara and Trout – however possibly not larger than against Mayweather.
It is, then, all about making sure the payday is as good as possible – and that’s where the two sides (according to Canelo himself) can’t make ends meet. The negotiations are complicated by the fact that Canelo’s people (probably with good reason) view him as the A-side.
The fighters seem game, and that leaves us back at the promoters once again. The (untrustworthy) explanation from De La Hoya is – among others – that Canelo is a natural lightmiddleweight and that his body simply isn’t ready for a “true” middleweight like Golovkin yet. That, however, doesn’t make too much sense, as Canelo usually is bigger than Golovkin come fight day.
The question should hence be, whether De La Hoya really wants Canelo’s body to be “ready” before Golovkin gets near his 40th birthday (Golovkin is currently 34 years old)?
How about Golovkin then?
But as Canelo, at the tender age of 26, has already stepped up against people like Floyd Mayweather, Miguel Cotto, Erislandy Lara and Austin Trout, why is “the people” then rallying behind Golovkin, who – if anyone – hasn’t met opposition from his own high level?
Golovkin is deservedly considered at one of the sport’s best boxers across all weight classes, just as he’s one of few fighters who can headline a PPV event.
That, however, has more to do with how he has performed – rather than against whom. He has fought respectable names such as David Lemieux, Martin Murray and Daniel Geale at times where they were in fact relevant fighters, but his CV is still very slender for a man on top of the sport.
Golovkin’s popularity is therefore – along with the thrilling way he chops down opposition in the ring – seemingly rooted in something that De La Hoya and Canelo fails to manage: The art of controlling the narrative about the boxer.
Golovkin has (undoubtedly with good reason) assumed the role as the most avoided boxer around –and that generates a lot of sympathy. Golovkin wants to fight anyone – he proclaims – but he constantly has to deal with quality opposition ducking the challenge. That is at least the narrative.
In the build up to Golovkin’s upcoming fight with England’s Kell Brook, it is for instance publicly known that Golovkin’s people (K2 Promotions) unsuccessfully tried to get him in the ring with Canelo, Billy Joe Saunders and Chris Eubank Jr.
Golovkin is obviously important to K2 as well, but they don’t want to cut corners like Golden Boy. With Golovkin’s 34 years they simply do not have the time.
This coming Saturday (now, this past Saturday), the fight against Kell Brook in London awaits Golovkin.
At first sight a semi bizarre match-up, which surprised the boxing world in the same fashion that Canelo’s fight against Amir Khan did back in May.
The welterweight Brook is moving up two weight classes, and even though his promoter Eddie Hearn has tried to depict him as an almost natural middleweight, he will still have to fight 13 pounds above his regular weight class against the beast of middleweight.
That is really brave – and not very ”measured risk” – but it could possible turn out really ugly for Brook. ‘Sport fortalt’ predicts a KO-victory for Golovkin inside the first 7 rounds.
While we are waiting
‘Sport fortalt’ have previously foreseen a match-up between Canelo and Golovkin next year. The tentative fight date is apparently September 2017 at the moment, and it is therefore no surprise that both boxers keep on fighting. What is surprising, however, (and not least adding significantly to Canelo’s fading popularity) is the fact that Canelos next opponent is called Liam Smith.
On the 17th of September Canelo enters the ring against the unbeaten Englishman, who is in fact a decent boxer, whom Canelo has to perform his very best against in order to beat. The second youngest of the terrific Smith brothers is to some extend “the real deal”.
The problem is, though, that – completely contrary to want most fans had expected and hoped for –Canelo after his title defence against Amir Khan chose to vacate his WBC-belt and step DOWN (!) in weight to fight Liam Smith for the WBO lightmiddleweight-belt.
An impressively tone-deaf decision, which has emphatically branded Canelo as a “duck”, a “Canela” etc.
The event in which Canelo faces Smith is subsequently a testament to the fact that the critique of De La Hoya as a promoter has more to it than just his (over)protection of Canelo and his untrustworthy statements.
If one takes a look at the undercard that Golden Boy has scrambled together for Canelo vs. Smith, it’s absolutely cringeworthy to think that the event takes place at AT&T Stadium in Texas (80.000 seats) and is broadcasted on HBO PPV.
The highlights on the undercard are Gabe Rosado vs. Willie Monroe and Joseph Diaz vs. Andrew Cancio. Two interesting fights in themselves, with Rosado vs. Monroe as guaranteed entertainment, but nonetheless completely insufficient as highlights on an undercard for an event of that (proposed) magnitude.
At the event Pacquaio vs. Bradley III in April, Gilberto Ramirez and Arthur Abraham for instance fought for the WBO supermiddleweight title, while an exiting featherweight bout between Oscar Valdez and Evgeny Gradovich was accompanied by fights with extremely exiting up-and-coming boxers such as Oleksandr Gvozdyk, Egidijus Kavaliauskas and Jose Carlos Ramirez.
All of which the reader should, btw, take notice as there might be one or two future world champions among them.
With the Canelo vs. Smith event Golden Boy instead follow in the footsteps of Canelo vs. Khan at which the undercard was equally uninteresting – with Glen Tapia vs. David Lemiuix being the highlight.
The examples are numerous but the conclusion is simple: De La Hoya is too lightweighted as a promoter these years. He has a golden calf in Canelo, but people will loose their interest and respect if he only spends his time polishing it.
He needs to find the right balance between and risk, and apparently he isn’t all that good at finding it currently.
I thought it might interest others than a small group of Danish readers, so I translated it into English (quickly: so don’t kill me for bad language or grammar). It’s written just before GGG vs. Brook for the website Sportfortalt.dk, which I co-run. Feel free to disagree with my arguments. In fact, I hope some do.
While we’re still waiting for Golovkin vs. Canelo – and losing respect for De La Hoya in the meantime
Boxing fans around the world are craving the match up between Gennady Golovkin and Saul ”Canelo” Alvarez. No deal has been struck yet and that’s primarily affecting Canelo’s popularity. ’Sport fortalt’ takes a look at the reasons why Canelo is turning into a boxing laughingstock.
The biggest possible match-up in current world boxing is still awaited.
The fight between Kazakhstan’s Gennady Golovkin and Mexico’s Saul ”Canelo” Alvarez is still without a date, and boxing fans will just have to trust the two side’s alleged willingness to negotiate.
But while the fight inside the ropes is without a victor, it is becoming increasingly clear that Golovkin is winning big in the “fight” for public sympathy.
Canelo does have his big and loyal fan base, but the mood seems to be turning against the Mexican hope among most neutral boxing fans.
In online forums, Youtube-videos and in reporter’s questions, a growing opinion is reflected: Canelo is currently cutting corners in his boxing career.
A stubborn insistence on fighting at catch weights, repeated fights against lighter opponents (weight-wise), and the absence of a Golovkin-fight are all contributing factors to the red-haired’s diminishing popularity.
The reasons behind Golovkin’s superiority in the image-battle between the two are, however, not necessarily Canelo’s own fault entirely.
In the battle for public and press approval, the weak link rather seems to be Canelo’s promoter –former top boxer Oscar De La Hoya.
Not so golden promotion
The Golden Boy as De La Hoya was called in his active career, and as he now calls his promotion company, has Canelo as the main product.
And that product is indeed worth protecting. Despite being only 26 years old, the redheaded Mexican has already been among the sport’s most prolific names for a small handful of years.
With their management of Canelo’s career, De La Hoya and the Canelo-camp does, nonetheless, make it hard to embrace the otherwise sympathetic and talented young boxing phenomenon.
The blame in this instance should primarily be directed towards De La Hoya and Golden Boy – at least if one looks at what they say themselves.
Even though promoters, managers, PR people etc. traditionally shroud boxing in smokescreen, Golden Boy is in fact quite open about the reasons as to why Canelo’s career is being managed as it is.
In the article ”The Building of Canelo” from the July issue of Ring Magazine, Golden Boy president Eric Gomez explains the ”measured risk”-thinking that dictates the company’s management of Canelo’s career.
Every Canelo bout entails a natural amount of risk, but it’s being carefully measured every time, Gomez explains – with the same kind of thinking that make insurance companies rich, writes Ring Magazine in its article.
And this is exactly one of Golden Boy’s most apparent problems in the ”image-battle” against Golovkin.
Boxing is hence rarely interesting when the main players act like insurance companies.
The Golden Boy president is aware of this and adds among other things:
”When you´re developing a fighter you get to a certain point and then you have to turn them loose to sink or swim.”
That “certain point” should have been reached a long time ago for Canelo. But at the moment Golden Boy doesn’t seem to want to let Canelo swim as long as Golovkin is lurking in the deep waters.
With Canelo’s status, talent and record, his reputation is suffering badly as a consequence.
They main problem for Canelo in this relation seems to Golden Boy’s absolute dependence on him.
After the former CEO Richard Schaefer left the company in 2014, Golden Boy was almost left in ruins. De La Hoya sued Schaefer for deliberately having let boxer’s contracts run out so that Schaefer could bring them with him to boxing’s mysterious lord, the shy businessman Al Haymon.
All of this while De La Hoya was checking in and out of rehab – letting his business run dangerously close to the edge of the abyss.
As De La Hoya – in his own words – got back on his feet again, he was more or less left with Canelo as his company’s only source of income. That is, very roughly speaking, how things still are, and De La Hoya therefore has an obvious interesting in protecting his money boy carefully.
Golden Boy does have names such as Jorge Linares, Francisco Vargas, Sadam Ali, Bernard Hopkins and David Lemieux to fall back on, but none of them are anywhere close to the value of Canelo.
”We know what he means to our company. He’s our franchise,” says Eric Gomez to Ring Magazine and notes how there’s an enormous pressure on the whole cooperation every time Canelo enters the ring.
Erislandy Lara as an example
One of the most obvious arguments as to why it’s Golden Boy putting the brakes on Canelo, is found in the list of his choice of prior opponents – especially illustrated by the choice to step up against Cuba’s Erislandy Lara in 2014.
Erislandy Lara has thus to be considered as one of the least attractive opponents in boxing all together – if one measures risk against reward. Lara is an extremely talented boxer who’s style – just like countryman Guillermo Rigondeaux – just doesn’t seem to be significantly appreciated by the crucial American boxing audience.
In terms of Golden Boy’s ”measured risk”, Erislandy Lara should therefore have been way to dangerous for Canelo.
At the time, Canelo came of his defeat to Floyd Mayweather less than 12 months before, and Golden Boy didn’t want any piece of Lara.
”There was no way I wanted that fight. He was another mover,” says Eric Gomez with reference to Lara’s Mayweather-characteristics.
But Canelo overruled his promoters and took the fight – and an eventual extremely close split decision.
Golden Boy had otherwise build Canelo’s career slowly with fights against fading, but recognizable, names such as Carlos Baldomir, Matthew Hatton, Kermit Cintron and Shane Mosley.
Classic career-handling.
The slow progress has hence been interrupted the times Canelo himself has stepped in and disregarded the insurance mathematics and insisted on bouts against Austin Trout, Floyd Mayweather and Erislandy Lara – three fights that Golden Boy all tried to prevent, Eric Gomez admits.
The 88-year-old Hall of Fame-promoter Don Chargin, who acts as a mentor to De La Hoya and Golden Boy, describes Canelo as ”a little different than most guys” in this instance.
”Most guys you bring along and they want easier fights but Canelo really wanted to fight the best. It was Canelo who insisted on the Mayweather fight, when Golden Boy wanted to wait, which would have been right from a promotor’s standpoint. He’s the one who wanted Trout when nobody wanted to fight Trout,” he says – again to Ring Magazine.
But if Canelo apparently insists on fighting the best, you’ll have to ask why he doesn’t overrule Golden Boy these days and demand a fight against Golovkin.
The reason is – possibly – that Canelo has reached the same conclusion as most other people: The risk of loosing to Golovkin is considerably larger than it was against Lara and Trout – however possibly not larger than against Mayweather.
It is, then, all about making sure the payday is as good as possible – and that’s where the two sides (according to Canelo himself) can’t make ends meet. The negotiations are complicated by the fact that Canelo’s people (probably with good reason) view him as the A-side.
The fighters seem game, and that leaves us back at the promoters once again. The (untrustworthy) explanation from De La Hoya is – among others – that Canelo is a natural lightmiddleweight and that his body simply isn’t ready for a “true” middleweight like Golovkin yet. That, however, doesn’t make too much sense, as Canelo usually is bigger than Golovkin come fight day.
The question should hence be, whether De La Hoya really wants Canelo’s body to be “ready” before Golovkin gets near his 40th birthday (Golovkin is currently 34 years old)?
How about Golovkin then?
But as Canelo, at the tender age of 26, has already stepped up against people like Floyd Mayweather, Miguel Cotto, Erislandy Lara and Austin Trout, why is “the people” then rallying behind Golovkin, who – if anyone – hasn’t met opposition from his own high level?
Golovkin is deservedly considered at one of the sport’s best boxers across all weight classes, just as he’s one of few fighters who can headline a PPV event.
That, however, has more to do with how he has performed – rather than against whom. He has fought respectable names such as David Lemieux, Martin Murray and Daniel Geale at times where they were in fact relevant fighters, but his CV is still very slender for a man on top of the sport.
Golovkin’s popularity is therefore – along with the thrilling way he chops down opposition in the ring – seemingly rooted in something that De La Hoya and Canelo fails to manage: The art of controlling the narrative about the boxer.
Golovkin has (undoubtedly with good reason) assumed the role as the most avoided boxer around –and that generates a lot of sympathy. Golovkin wants to fight anyone – he proclaims – but he constantly has to deal with quality opposition ducking the challenge. That is at least the narrative.
In the build up to Golovkin’s upcoming fight with England’s Kell Brook, it is for instance publicly known that Golovkin’s people (K2 Promotions) unsuccessfully tried to get him in the ring with Canelo, Billy Joe Saunders and Chris Eubank Jr.
Golovkin is obviously important to K2 as well, but they don’t want to cut corners like Golden Boy. With Golovkin’s 34 years they simply do not have the time.
This coming Saturday (now, this past Saturday), the fight against Kell Brook in London awaits Golovkin.
At first sight a semi bizarre match-up, which surprised the boxing world in the same fashion that Canelo’s fight against Amir Khan did back in May.
The welterweight Brook is moving up two weight classes, and even though his promoter Eddie Hearn has tried to depict him as an almost natural middleweight, he will still have to fight 13 pounds above his regular weight class against the beast of middleweight.
That is really brave – and not very ”measured risk” – but it could possible turn out really ugly for Brook. ‘Sport fortalt’ predicts a KO-victory for Golovkin inside the first 7 rounds.
While we are waiting
‘Sport fortalt’ have previously foreseen a match-up between Canelo and Golovkin next year. The tentative fight date is apparently September 2017 at the moment, and it is therefore no surprise that both boxers keep on fighting. What is surprising, however, (and not least adding significantly to Canelo’s fading popularity) is the fact that Canelos next opponent is called Liam Smith.
On the 17th of September Canelo enters the ring against the unbeaten Englishman, who is in fact a decent boxer, whom Canelo has to perform his very best against in order to beat. The second youngest of the terrific Smith brothers is to some extend “the real deal”.
The problem is, though, that – completely contrary to want most fans had expected and hoped for –Canelo after his title defence against Amir Khan chose to vacate his WBC-belt and step DOWN (!) in weight to fight Liam Smith for the WBO lightmiddleweight-belt.
An impressively tone-deaf decision, which has emphatically branded Canelo as a “duck”, a “Canela” etc.
The event in which Canelo faces Smith is subsequently a testament to the fact that the critique of De La Hoya as a promoter has more to it than just his (over)protection of Canelo and his untrustworthy statements.
If one takes a look at the undercard that Golden Boy has scrambled together for Canelo vs. Smith, it’s absolutely cringeworthy to think that the event takes place at AT&T Stadium in Texas (80.000 seats) and is broadcasted on HBO PPV.
The highlights on the undercard are Gabe Rosado vs. Willie Monroe and Joseph Diaz vs. Andrew Cancio. Two interesting fights in themselves, with Rosado vs. Monroe as guaranteed entertainment, but nonetheless completely insufficient as highlights on an undercard for an event of that (proposed) magnitude.
At the event Pacquaio vs. Bradley III in April, Gilberto Ramirez and Arthur Abraham for instance fought for the WBO supermiddleweight title, while an exiting featherweight bout between Oscar Valdez and Evgeny Gradovich was accompanied by fights with extremely exiting up-and-coming boxers such as Oleksandr Gvozdyk, Egidijus Kavaliauskas and Jose Carlos Ramirez.
All of which the reader should, btw, take notice as there might be one or two future world champions among them.
With the Canelo vs. Smith event Golden Boy instead follow in the footsteps of Canelo vs. Khan at which the undercard was equally uninteresting – with Glen Tapia vs. David Lemiuix being the highlight.
The examples are numerous but the conclusion is simple: De La Hoya is too lightweighted as a promoter these years. He has a golden calf in Canelo, but people will loose their interest and respect if he only spends his time polishing it.
He needs to find the right balance between and risk, and apparently he isn’t all that good at finding it currently.