Tom Loeffler, promoter of IBF, WBA, WBC, IBO middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (37-0-1, 33 KOs), believes the majority of the boxing public saw his boxer as the rightful winner of last week's contest with Mexican superstar Saul "Canelo" Alvarez (49-1-2, 34 KOs).
Golovkin and Canelo fought to a controversial twelve round draw at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
The scores were 118-110 Canelo, 115-113 Golovkin and 114-114 for the draw.
After the decision was announced, and during Canelo's post-fight interview, the arena showered the Mexican boxer with boos.
“We’ve never seen Canelo get booed like that even by his own fans in that post-fight interview (in the ring), so definitely the majority of the public thought Gennady won the fight,” Loeffler said to the Los Angeles Daily News.
“It seemed like everyone came away from that fight with an unsatisfied feeling.”
Eric Gomez, president of Golden Boy Promotions, said Canelo is fully on board with doing a rematch. Gomez spoke to Golden Boy CEO Oscar De La Hoya and the Golovkin rematch appears to be the priority.
Canelo is scheduled to fight again in May 2018, during Cinco De Mayo weekend.
“You might agree with me and you might not, and the fans might agree with me or they might not; it doesn’t matter,” Gomez said. “But Canelo and Golden Boy are victims of that bad card as well. Not just Golovkin.
“Everybody starts pointing their fingers at us, like if we had something to do with it. That’s what really hurts because, leading up to the fight, everything was so perfect. We told everybody, ‘This is going to be a great fight, an instant classic.'” And it was. It delivered. And then you have the bad scorecard and everybody started focusing on that. So in many ways, we’re a victim also, of that. It’s not fair to us because we didn’t do anything wrong. Canelo didn’t do anything wrong. Canelo fought his ass off. I spoke to Oscar about it and he said, ‘Look, we want the tiebreaker.'”