Money is the major hold-up in negotiations for the Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady Golovkin rematch.
This month should’ve featured the rematch between unified middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (38-0-1, 34 KOs) and Canelo Alvarez (49-1-2, 34 KOs), but Canelo’s drug test failure for clenbuterol led to the bout’s cancellation and a six-month ban for Alvarez. Golovkin wound up boxing Vanes Martirosyan on a regular HBO card, knocking out the Edmond Tarverdyan trained fighter in just two rounds.
With the glorified stay-busy bout now completed, you would think that it’s full speed ahead to booking the rematch again, but this is boxing, and you know it’s never that simple.
The revenue split for the first fight was 70-30 in Canelo’s favor, with the May 5th rematch supposedly marked at 65-35. With Canelo’s positive drug test, Golovkin wants terms to be 50-50.
“All Gennady came back with is that, ‘I just want a fair split, I want a 50-50 split. I’m the champion,’” Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler said (via LA Daily News). “We made a lot of concessions for the first fight, was a very low percentage for Gennady. We made a lot of concessions for the rematch after Gennady proved his value.
“But Canelo, for whatever reason, was insisting on still having a huge advantage. … It was 65-35 percent for the rematch and Gennady thinks that’s just not fair. Taking 35 percent as the champion is just not fair.”
Loeffler claims that Canelo made in the neighborhood of $50 million for the first fight, while Golovkin made $20 million. The official fight purses were $5 million for Canelo and $3 million for Golovkin, but both men obviously got additional money from pay-per-view revenue.
Alvarez was the arguable A-side for his 2015 bout vs. Miguel Cotto, but the money was split 55-45 in Cotto’s favor, so Loeffler and Golovkin feel it’s only fair under these new circumstances that Golovkin command a bigger piece of the pie.
Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya told Ring Magazine that he doesn’t believe Golovkin even wants the rematch, and is doing what he can to get out of it.
“It’s clear to us that Golovkin doesn’t want to fight Canelo,” De La Hoya said during a phone interview. “It’s clear to us that after all the demands that they made, after Canelo having to do the hair follicle test, having to enroll in VADA, having to be tested by the Nevada State Athletic Commission randomly even before he was enrolled in VADA, it’s clear that GGG is afraid.
“So we’re going to move on and I’m going to start making phone calls to (Daniel Jacobs’) people, to (Billy Joe) Saunders’ people, start making calls to (Jermall) Charlo and (Spike) O’Sullivan.”
Consider the fight shelved at this point. De La Hoya says he’s willing to revive the bout provided Golovkin’s side agrees to the previous terms. If they do choose to go with separate matchups, then Golovkin has IBF mandatory challenger Sergey Derevyanchenko to deal with, whereas Canelo can fight pretty much whomever he wants considering he doesn’t have a title to defend.
Alvarez and Golovkin battled to a controversial split draw back in September 2017. The fight drew well over one million PPV buys and produced the third-largest gate in boxing history.