Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez lived up to his status as boxing odds favorite and not only knocked out Amir Khan to retain his WBC middleweight title. Khan put on the weight that would qualify him challenge Alvarez for the strap, but the outcome was anything but unpredictable. Khan shouldn’t even have been in the ring in the first place; the real challenger was looking on from ringside.
Gennady Golovkin has dominated the middleweight division for years with 32 knockouts in 35 career professional bouts. He holds the highest KO percentage in the history of the division. Triple G might be the most dangerous boxer right now and no one wants to step in the ring with him. A Golovkin vs. Alvarez fight is what fans want and what boxing needs but that doesn’t mean it’s a given.
Promoter Oscar De La Hoya said a Canelo versus Golovkin fight should happen last October before Golovkin beat David Lemieux, as long as Alvarez defeated Miguel Cotto – which he did, but still nothing happened. With both camps disagreeing over the weight the fight would be held at, the WBC announced that both would be allowed to compete in interim fights, which resulted in one-sided wins for both.
Golovkin is the mandatory challenger for Alvarez’s middleweight championship, and WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman said that Alvarez will be stripped of his title if he does not fight Golovkin next. Golden Boy Promotions and K2 now have a couple of weeks to make a deal. As Golovkin’s profile rises among even casual boxing fans, Alvarez’s team is under pressure to pull the trigger on the fight, which Golovkin is fully aware of. After Alvarez’s win, Golovkin tweeted several times that he’s ready to go.
Alvarez said Sunday in his post-fight news conference that’s he’s willing to face Golovkin at 160, which was believed to be the most important sticking point. The purse could also delay talks. Alvarez is a much bigger star, a bigger pay-per-view draw, and a more heavily boxing odds favorite than Golovkin and will surely get a larger share of the purse, but according to the LA Times, Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler wants his client to earn 45% of the purse.
De La Hoya said in January that if it were up to him, Alvarez would take 90% of the money. Even Khan has dared Canelo to defend his belt against Golovkin, which seems to indicate that the English would put his money on the Russian, if he were to bet on boxing, and after the way he got knocked out on Sunday, that just might be his lone remaining way to be involved with the sport.