Golovkin's Promoter Optimistic Despite No Canelo Guarantee

by David P. Greisman

If Tom Loeffler and the rest of Gennady Golovkin’s team would’ve had their way, “Triple G” would’ve fought for the World Boxing Council title and the lineal middleweight championship some time ago.

Instead, Golovkin acquired the WBC belt after the latest person to hold it, Canelo Alvarez, vacated the title. Canelo did so rather than enter into negotiations to face Golovkin next. Instead, Alvarez will challenge for a junior middleweight title against Liam Smith in September.

The Canelo-Golovkin fight, if it happens, will happen no sooner than fall 2017.

It’s only a verbal agreement right now, according to Tom Loeffler of K2 Promotions, who is optimistic nonetheless that the bout will take place.

“I think it’ll happen next year,” Loeffler told BoxingScene.com late last month. “Golden Boy wanted to build it up and, from our side, you can’t force the fight to happen. I believe Canelo wants to make the fight, but I think from a marketing perspective they’re looking at building it up to an even bigger event. The reality is that if it’s a year delayed, for us, obviously we’d like to do it as soon as possible. We would have liked to do it last May. But you can’t force it.

“If you only have to wait a year for the biggest fight in boxing, that’s what we’re willing to go through,” he said. “And in the meantime, the bigger we can build Gennady, and the bigger fights we can make for him, the bigger that event will get. I think we’ll see it happen towards the fall of 2017.”

He acknowledged that there’s no guarantee that it’ll happen, but, as he said, there’s never any guarantees in boxing.

“That’s one thing about not doing the fight right away. You never know what happens to either fighter, if one of them loses, if one of them gets injured, whatever the case is,” Loeffler said. “I think with those two guys being the most marketable right there at middleweight, and Canelo right now is fighting at junior middleweight for his next fight, we can’t guarantee it’s going to happen. I just have to go on my gut instincts in the discussions I’ve had with Golden Boy and the warrior I believe Canelo is. I think it’ll happen next year.”

He was then asked whether he would prefer to have an agreement in place beyond the verbal one.

“We can only do what we’re able to do on it,” Loeffler said. “Yeah. If we had something that’s locked in, that’s always great.”

But he feels the star power of Golovkin and the magnitude of the fight will help make it happen.

“Again, we’ll keep building up Gennady, and the bigger we make him — look, when you have a fight that’s that big and the pie is that big to cut up, then fights are possible,” Loeffler said. “There’s no roadblocks like there were in some of the other big fights, with the VADA testing, with the sponsorships and the TV companies. There’s no hurdles there. I really think that it’ll happen.”

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