by David P. Greisman

In four weeks, boxing fans have seen several of the sport’s top stars — a word that can apply to accomplishment or to popularity. Often, though not always, the latter is a result of the former.

On April 25, Wladimir Klitschko headlined on HBO against Bryant Jennings, part of the multi-fight deal the network has with the 39-year-old heavyweight champion, one of the best boxers in the entire world.

On May 2, Floyd Mayweather Jr., 38, topped Manny Pacquiao, 36, in a bout between two of the best fighters in the sport and of this era. Pacquiao, while under an HBO contract, had long been a pay-per-view headliner and was only featured on the network during the replays that air a week afterward.

On May 9, Canelo Alvarez, 24, demolished James Kirkland in a fight that wasn’t for a world title and wasn’t against a top junior middleweight contender and still drew the biggest audience for boxing on a premium cable channel in nearly nine years. The fight aired on HBO, the beginning of the network’s new multi-fight deal with Alvarez.

And this past weekend, Gennady Golovkin put Willie Monroe on the canvas three times in six rounds en route to a stoppage victory, the 20th straight win for Golovkin to come by knockout or technical knockout, a streak that dates back six and a half years. Eight of those past 10 knockouts have come on HBO. Last year, the network extended its contract with Golovkin, 33, a deal that meant it would even travel to Monte Carlo to show Golovkin’s occasional bouts there rather than not feature the man who is likely the best middleweight in the world and is considered by many to be among the best fighters in the sport.

On the undercard of Golovkin-Monroe, much of the American boxing audience got its first glimpse at Roman Gonzalez, a former 105- and 108-pound titleholder who is now the 112-pound champion. Gonzalez needed less than two rounds to take out Edgar Sosa. It was a stellar showing for an undefeated 27-year-old dynamo who was already known by hardcore boxing fans and those who watch Spanish-language networks. He had otherwise previously not gotten the kind of attention that someone of his talent, power and entertainment value would otherwise get were he in heavier weight classes, which get far more of the spotlight.

Golovkin and Gonzalez were clear favorites going into their fights. They were expected to win. HBO’s commentary team made a big deal of Gonzalez, showing a highlight package of his past performances and playing up his victory over Sosa. If people weren’t aware of Gonzalez beforehand, they definitely wouldn’t have known that Sosa, while 35 years old and with eight losses on his record going into the fight, was a former 108-pound titleholder who remained a highly respectable opponent.

Sosa was ranked fourth by The Ring magazine — fifth if you include the champion, Gonzalez — and fifth by the Transnational Boxing Ratings Board (sixth if you include Gonzalez). Dan Rafael of ESPN.com, who ranks boxers without separating the champion, had Gonzalez at No. 1 and Sosa at No. 5.

Yet Gonzalez was able to make it look easy.

He hurt Sosa early, then downed him three times in the second round. He was accurate and painfully so, hitting Sosa with 72 of 130 punches, a ridiculous 55 percent connect rate, including 57 of 96 power shots, or 59 percent.

It was quite an introduction for Gonzalez. HBO asked him afterward about a young but sensational 115-pound fighter named Naoya Inoue. While Inoue may not come next, there are several other bouts to be made at 112, whether it is with former titleholder Brian Viloria or the rematch with Juan Francisco Estrada that hardcore boxing fans have desired in the time since Gonzalez won their first installment in late 2012 down at 108 pounds. Estrada now has two world titles at flyweight thanks to a win over Viloria.

HBO has been investing in fan-friendly power-punchers from other countries, including Golovkin and light heavyweight titleholder Sergey Kovalev. Gonzalez is another deserving candidate. Jorge Arce, Vic Darchinyan and Nonito Donaire all got American airtime on Showtime and HBO when they were at 112 and 115 pounds. That was rare for this era, in which you typically need to go outside of the United States for the lowest weight classes to get respect.

Golovkin has been growing in stature over the past couple of years, drawing pretty good ratings on HBO and also attracting crowds into arenas from coast to coast, in New York City and Southern California. Throughout, there have been two frustrations: He hasn’t yet faced any of the other top middleweights, and that’s because the other top middleweights haven’t been in a hurry to face him.

As is often the case, much of that has to do with business.

When Sergio Martinez was the champion at 160, Golovkin had not yet become the star he is today. Then Golovkin’s ratings grew, but Martinez was out with an injury. Martinez returned, still hobbled, to defend against Miguel Cotto in a pay-per-view that would bring more money than a Golovkin fight. Cotto blew Martinez away.

Cotto hasn’t fought since, though he’ll appear this June against Daniel Geale, who Golovkin put away in three rounds last year. Should Cotto win, he will likely move toward a pay-per-view fight with Canelo Alvarez, putting together the most popular active fighter from Puerto Rico against the most popular active fighter from Mexico.

Golovkin, who has one major world title, has also been positioned since late last year as a mandatory challenger to Cotto’s belt bestowed by the World Boxing Council. The WBC has granted Cotto permission to defend it first against Geale instead of Golovkin. Cotto’s team has reportedly been seeking to make a deal with Golovkin a— sking Golovkin to step aside so that Cotto can make another defense of it afterward against a different opponent. They’ve yet to reach a deal. Even if they don’t, we’re still likely to see Cotto drop the title and face Alvarez anyway.

Two middleweights, Peter Quillin and Danny Jacobs, are with boxing adviser Al Haymon, featured on other networks as part of Haymon’s new Premier Boxing Champions, and were not being moved toward Golovkin even before PBC launched. A third Haymon middleweight, Jermain Taylor, is likely done as a fighter thanks to serious criminal charges against him.

It would be interesting to find out whether a fight could be made with 154-pound contender Erislandy Lara, whose team has called out Golovkin. Lara also is with Haymon but has tended not to be a primary focus of those who’ve promoted him in recent years. Perhaps Haymon would allow a Golovkin fight. It’s more likely he would put Lara in with a stable-mate.

There are other potential foes. Andy Lee, who holds a world title, is due to make a mandatory defense against Billy Joe Saunders. The winner could be available to face Golovkin. So, too, could the winner of an upcoming bout for Taylor’s vacant title between Hassan N’Dam and David Lemieux.

Golovkin’s team has said that they will not wait for opponents to be available and want to remain active. So far his biggest wins came against a former titleholder in Geale and alliterative former title challengers Matthew Macklin and Martin Murray. Monroe had never faced anyone near those levels of opponent, never mind someone on par with Golovkin. But he had won nine in a row and had won a mini-tournament on ESPN2’s “Friday Night Fights” in 2014. He also was a southpaw who was more a boxer than a brawler, a stance and a style against which Golovkin wished to stay fresh.

Golovkin’s team has also said that the fighter is open to moving to 168 to face some of the top names there.

But until those big fights are made, HBO will continue to put on matches in which Golovkin is expected to win. These serve to keep Golovkin fresh in the minds of fans, building momentum and a fan base in the interim. They also seek to maintain a relationship with him, one seven-figure payday at a time.

In an ideal world, networks would have little trouble making the best fights possible and wouldn’t in essence have to hand a fighter a payday for busy work. Yet it happens, as with when Showtime put on the much-maligned card last August in which Danny Garcia blew out Rod Salka while Lamont Peterson dominated Edgar Santana. That network had wanted to make Garcia-Peterson but were told that it couldn’t yet be done. Showtime had invested money in the fighters already and wanted to keep a healthy relationship. It paid again, hoping that payment would pay off. Instead, Haymon’s delaying tactic worked to his own benefit; he saved that fight for a PBC broadcast this past April.

HBO isn’t being strung along the same way by Golovkin; the circumstances regarding the other top names at 160 were referenced above.

It’s likely that HBO considers these paydays to be a long-term investment. The network long had a reputation for wanting the best heavyweight and the best fighters in the sport on its broadcasts. Wladimir Klitschko was gone for much of the past several years, featured only in an occasional broadcast. Now he is back, and his win over Jennings had a good rating.

Mayweather departed HBO for Showtime in 2013. Pacquiao remained an HBO fighter. Neither is likely to remain in the sport for much longer.

It makes sense, then, that Alvarez, Golovkin and Kovalev were signed to multi-fight contracts. HBO is locking in the boxers available that its executives see as the future of the sport, names they can build around. It also makes sense that HBO finally gave Roman Gonzalez an opportunity.

Mayweather and Pacquiao aren’t yet gone. They just met in the most lucrative fight ever to take place. But promoters and networks must always be looking for the next prospect who can become a contender and titleholder, and the next fighter who can transcend into a star.

You can’t wait until the present is past to start building for the future.

The 10 Count

1.  Canelo Alvarez’s win over James Kirkland earlier this month wasn’t just a stellar performance in the ring. It was a stellar performance in the ratings as well.

Alvarez- Kirkland pulled in an average audience of 2,146,000 viewers, peaking at nearly 2.3 million. While less than audiences of 3 million and more that NBC’s two broadcasts of “Premier Boxing Champions” got, that is a massive number for boxing on premium cable these days.

It is the highest number for an individual broadcast of a boxing match on HBO since the June 17, 2006, re-airing of the previous week’s pay-per-view bout between Bernard Hopkins and Antonio Tarver, which drew an audience of 2.46 million.

(The live showing of Oscar De La Hoya’s win over Steve Forbes had 2.102 million viewers. And the 2011 fight between Wladimir Klitschko and David Haye had 1.234 million for the live early evening airing and another 1.242 million for the replay later that night, though those numbers don’t get combined when it comes to apples-to-apples ratings comparisons.)

Canelo’s ratings power can’t even be attributed solely to the broadcast lead-in from the re-airing of the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao pay-per-view. According to the SportsTVRatings account on Twitter, Mayweather-Pacquiao averaged 1.118 million viewers, the time between Mayweather-Pacquiao and Alvarez-Kirkland averaged 1.58 million, and the live main event then jumped up to 2.146 million.

(Over on Showtime, the rebroadcast of Mayweather-Pacquiao averaged 370,000 viewers.)

2.  Canelo’s great rating isn’t overly surprising when you consider his past power as an attraction.

Canelo was a very good draw from the moment he first began to appear on HBO broadcasts as a main eventer in early 2011. He pulled in 1.381 million for a win over Matthew Hatton, 1.55 million for a win over Ryan Rhodes in 2011, appeared on a pay-per-view undercard against Alfonso Gomez (Canelo was there to help bring pay-per-view buys), then pulled in 1.469 million for his win over Kermit Cintron.

The next year brought a pay-per-view undercard appearance against Shane Mosley, then a move to Showtime, where he drew 1.036 million against late replacement opponent Josesito Lopez on a night where their card was opposite the Sergio Martinez-Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. pay-per-view.

In 2013, Alvarez’s win over Austin Trout drew 1.061 million, and Canelo then went on to face Floyd Mayweather Jr. in what was the most lucrative pay-per-view ever until Mayweather fought Pacquiao.

Still, Canelo didn’t become a big pay-per-view draw himself. His time as an A-side against Alfredo Angulo and Erislandy Lara didn’t bring big buy rates. Part of that may be because the market itself is changing.

But there’s clearly a growing audience that wants to see Alvarez fight. He was already a huge star in Mexico. While boxing has much more of a niche audience in the United States, Canelo is undoubtedly one of the top stars now in two countries.

3.  All of which confirms what everyone was saying when Frankie Gomez came in remarkably overweight for a bout with Humberto Soto that would’ve been on the Alvarez-Kirkland undercard.

It was as prime a location as possible — between Mayweather-Pacquiao and Canelo-Kirkland. He could’ve had a larger audience seeing him perform than many of the other top stars do today within the United States.

4.  Of course, Canelo-Kirkland wasn’t even the biggest number to come out last week.

Mayweather-Pacquiao likely pulled in at least 4.4 million buys and more than $400 million in revenue just from pay-per-view purchases in the United States. The previous records were 2.48 million buys for Mayweather vs. Oscar De La Hoya and $150 million for Mayweather vs. Canelo Alvarez.

Ticket sales on the primary market drew more than $71 million, a mark that may never be broken given that the previous record was $20 million for Mayweather vs. Canelo.

With other streams of revenue included, those involved with the promotion expect that it’ll rake in more than half a billion dollars.

Good for them. But what’ll be really good for the sport is if some of those who tuned in for Mayweather-Pacquiao begin to watch fights on a regular basis.

5.  In another piece of “YAY! But…” news, there was the Nevada Athletic Commission’s vote last week to institute far more severe penalties for those who use banned substances, including performance-enhancing drugs.

Per news website MMA Junkie, those penalties are guidelines and not mandatory, and they scale up rapidly on subsequent offenses. They start with:

- Three years suspension and between 50 and 70 percent of the fighter’s purse for the use of steroids.

- Two years suspension and 35 to 45 percent of the purse for the use of stimulants.

- Two years suspension and 30 to 40 percent of the purse for the use of diuretics.

- A year and a half suspension and 30 to 40 percent of the purse for the use of “sedatives, muscle relaxants, sleep aids, anxiolytics, opiates and cannabis/marijuana.”

A couple of things:

- Will the suspensions be recognized by other states even after a fighter’s license in Nevada has expired? I seem to recall that while Joe Mesi remained under medical suspension in Nevada, once his license there was no longer valid a judge ended up ruling that the suspension need not apply in other states.

- Will there be a deterrent beyond the penalties alone? Right now it doesn’t matter how severe these penalties are if, in general, there’s too little testing done when the testing matters most: weeks and months before the fight itself happens.

6.  BoxingScene.com headline, May 14: “Chavez Jr. Eyes Bute, Macklin or Heiland For July Bout”

Alternative headline: “Chavez Jr. eyes not-so-super super middleweight and not so super middleweights for July bout.”

7.  Boxers Behaving Badly: Brian Clookey, who fought from 2009 to 2014 between light heavyweight and heavyweight, has been accused of punching a police officer who had pursued the 33-year-old after he had allegedly driven drunk, tried to drive away from officers, then tried to run away from them, according to Upstate New York newspaper the Watertown Daily Times.

“Clookey was charged with third-degree attempted assault, felony driving while intoxicated, resisting arrest and obstruction of governmental administration,” the article said. “He was additionally cited for failure to obey a police officer, no seat belt, failure to signal, failure to keep right, improper right turn and passing a red light.”

Clookey’s record was 6-1-2 with 3 KOs.

8.   Boxers Behaving Goodly: Former welterweight champion and 140-pound titleholder Zab Judah and 140-pound contender Jessie Vargas were involved in the launch of a boxing gym within a youth correctional facility in Clark County, Nevada, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

“A lot of us here come from a similar background as these kids,” Vargas told the newspaper. “We made the gym into something that Zab and me would have loved to use. This is what these kids need to learn self-discipline and act right.”

The boxers were joined in an April visit to the facility by retired fighter Fernando Vargas and referees Robert Byrd, Joe Cortez, Russell Mora and Tony Weeks. Others may have been involved but weren’t featured in the article or its accompany photo album.

9.  I understand that heavyweight titleholder Deontay Wilder is returning from a hand injury he suffered in his January victory over Bermane Stiverne.

I also understand Wilder’s fight on June 13 is a homecoming bout, marking his first outing in his native Alabama since 2012. It is a continuation of their celebration of his achievement.

So while we shouldn’t expect a top opponent for Wilder’s first title defense, it’s nevertheless difficult to get excited about Wilder facing a heavyweight named Eric Molina.

Molina, a 33-year-old who is 23-2 with 17 KOs, may be faintly familiar due to one of those blemishes on his record. He lost to Chris Arreola by first-round technical knockout on a Showtime card back in February 2012. Since then, he’s won five in a row, with his last appearance being an eighth-round technical knockout of Raphael Zumbano Love this past January. He also stopped DaVarryl Williamson last year. (Somehow he’s ranked ninth by the WBC, because heavyweights.)

Still, Wilder is coming off a decision victory over Stiverne, who had a decision win and a stoppage win over Arreola, who needed less than three minutes to dispatch of Molina.

The fight will be on Showtime, which aired Wilder’s win over Stiverne earlier this year. That fight drew an average of 1.24 million viewers, the fourth-highest viewership ever for a boxing match on that network.

This week’s column touched on the idea of maintaining relationships with boxers while they keep busy. That’s what’s going on here. Wilder wants to fight several times this year. It’s a shame that this fight is not a scintillating match-up. But at best, those who do watch Wilder-Molina will get something entertaining while it lasts, and the casual fans who don’t follow boxing closely will have their interest in Wilder grow as he bombs Molina out. They then will tune in to see him again later, be it on Showtime or on a Premier Boxing Champions card elsewhere.

10.  Eric Molina’s nickname is “Drummer Boy.” Against Deontay Wilder, he’s not merely going to be thumped.

He’ll be rum-pum-pum-pum-pummeled…

“Fighting Words” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide . Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com