Be honest. You don’t really want to see Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady Golovkin in May. You’d rather each person fight someone else.
I know this because I read all your posts on social media. You think Golovkin was robbed in the first fight, so all you really want to see is justice for Golovkin in the second one. You’re fair-minded, after all, and craving justice for someone wronged is a natural and good thing.
But here’s the truth about your so-called justice for Golovkin. It’s disordered and misplaced. Because Golovkin didn’t beat Alvarez in the first fight. The fight was a draw, fair and square, and none of your fancy YouTube videos proclaiming heretical judges or 1000-word diatribes about how much better you are at scoring fights than the team of Dave Moretti, Adalaide Byrd and Don Trella does anything but pollute the narrative heading into the next fight.
So let’s just skip it.
Judges are just people. More than that, they’re boxing people, and all the crying and grandstanding we boxing people do after our hero doesn’t fight as well as expected just muddies up the water for everyone before the next fight.
Let’s just move on.
Alvarez and Golovkin can’t agree on a purse split for the second fight anyway. Alvarez contends he’s still the proportionally bigger star and so deserves close to the same 70-30 take he banked in the first fight. Nevermind that a 65-35 split was agreed to for the previously-scheduled-but-canceled second fight earlier this year. You know, the one that fell through because the Nevada Athletic Commission doesn’t know how to deal with voluntary anti-doping measures undertaken by fighters from the tainted meat-laden land of Mexico?
Golovkin wants an even split now, bu that doesn’t make any sense.
I mean, it makes sense if you parade around with GGG shirts and hats on your body. I guess I don’t blame you if you do. Golvokin is one of the best middleweights in recent history and one of the most likeable fighters in the sport today.
But Golovkin didn’t beat Alvarez in the first fight and nothing that’s happened since, including his unnecessary win over hapless hasbeen Vanes Martirosyan, has vaulted Golovkin onto even footing with Alvarez. You can’t claim nobody will fight Golovkin on one hand and then demand the purse terms for all the fighters willing to fight him on the other. The market is the market no matter how you feel about it.
It would be best if the rematch doesn’t happen in September. Alvarez doesn’t need Golovkin as much as Golovkin’s team seems to think he does. He was the sport’s biggest star before the first Golovkin fight, and he will be after his next fight, too. You can be mad Golovkin was born in Kazakhstan and that Alvarez was born in Mexico but it doesn’t change anything.
Money, power and popularity inherently behind Mexican fighters in boxing isn’t Alvarez’s fault.
What’s also not Alvarez’s fault is the faux outrage over the first fight. Whether you scored it a close win for Alvarez or Golovkin isn’t the issue. It was a good, hotly contested fight that could have gone either way. The way it did go was probably best and most fair. The draw turned in by the three judges at ringside signaled the bout was even. If there’s ever been an even-looking middleweight championship fight, Canelo-GGG was it.
But the wannabe GGG mafia has soiled the possibility for Alvarez to get a clean shake in the rematch–at least as things stand right now. Alvarez would be wise to just deny Golovkin’s demands and move on in scheduling other fights. There’s plenty of viable competition at middleweight for both fighters, and the prevailing narrative that Golovkin was somehow wronged in the first fight will start to slip once the 36-year-old gets back into the ring against upper-echelon middleweights.
Why? Because Golovkin isn’t the fighter he used to be, and he’s starting to show his age.
How about a Golovkin vs. Danny Jacobs rematch? Jacobs fought Golovkin to the brink in 2017 losing by razor-thin margins on all three scorecards. It was a good, close fight. It could have gone either way really. Funny, there’s no outrage over it on behalf of the African-American fighter.
Why is that?
And Alvarez? Well Alvarez can fight pretty much whomever he wants. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him against the likes of a Spike O’Sullivan or David Lemieux. And people will complain about it and scream how it isn’t fair, but that’s the kind of thing a fighter like Alvarez can do when standing atop the mountain.
It’s the same thing Floyd Mayweather did when he was there. Like Mayweather, Alvarez can fight whomever he wants whenever he wants to do it and bide his time on fighters who demand 50-50 splits when they don’t warrant it.
And you’ll be mad at him. You’ll say you hate him for it, and all your feelings will ball up inside you at once demanding justice for the wronged Golovkin.
But justice is fair and honest above all things, and just because you like a certain fighter over another in a close fight doesn’t change the surrounding facts about each man’s position in the sport. Besides, the concept of justice alone dictates that there must also be an objective truth.
So here’s that for you, too.
Alvarez is the top draw in the sport. Golovkin is not. And it’s probably a good thing they might not fight again until all parties involved in the promotion are willing to admit it.
