De La Hoya May Not Owe Fans Apology, But Canelo Deserves One

By Keith Idec

At least Oscar De La Hoya was honest.

In telling the Los Angeles Times’ Lance Pugmire this week that he doesn’t owe anyone an apology for making Canelo Alvarez-Liam Smith, “The Golden Boy” was forthright. He didn’t bother, as he has done numerous times as a fighter and promoter, trying to tell those that know better that down is up or, in this case, the wrong fight is the right fight.

Those invested in the boxing business – the resilient fans that actually enable this niche sport to thrive to some degree, other fighters, the media, rival promoters, television executives, etc. – fully understand this is about Alvarez taking a lot less risk than he would’ve encountered had he fought Gennady Golovkin. You know, the guy Alvarez very publicly promised he would fight, presumably tonight. The guy De La Hoya has criticized this week for looking very beatable against blown-up welterweight Kell Brook a week ago in London.

The guy, for whatever reasons real or nonsensical, Alvarez avoided to fight Smith (23-0-1, 13 KOs).

De La Hoya contends Alvarez (47-1-1, 33 KOs) will fight Golovkin next September, once he’s finished with his move back down one whole pound to properly prepare his body for an apparently daunting move up five whole pounds from the weight at which he last fought. Take a moment to pick yourself up off the floor and stop laughing.

Ready to continue? Good.

De La Hoya does owe someone an apology. It’s not any of us. We’re all adults completely capable of deciding for ourselves whether spending $64.95 in HD to watch mostly predictable boxing is worth our time and money.

But Alvarez deserves an apology from his promoter. Yes, he’s a 26-year-old man more than able to tell his promoter what he wants to do, rather than asking him if it’s OK.

This doesn’t absolve Alvarez from making a $3 million guarantee for a fight that’s more “Boxing After Dark” than pay-per-view. He is complicit in this maddening miscalculation as well.

Still, the Mexican superstar trusts De La Hoya implicitly to build his brand and pick the right fights for not only his bank account, but his legacy.

Before blasting a brave-but-chinny welterweight into unconsciousness four months ago, and now this Golovkin debacle, Alvarez was well on his way to becoming Mexican boxing royalty. He was a fearless beast who willingly fought the best boxer of this generation, southpaw movers who could make him look bad, murderous punchers who could’ve knocked him cold.

You name them, Alvarez fought them. And lost only to one of them.

That’s what makes his handling of the Golovkin situation so confusing. Alvarez seemingly understood that there’s more shame in avoiding than losing.

Even the most fickle fight fans would respect him more if Golovkin knocked him out in the fourth round than if he continues calling out the Kazakh knockout artist, only to run in the opposite direction, in this case Arlington, Texas.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. finally embraced that principle when he agreed to fight Manny Pacquiao last year. Whomever you want to blame, the fact that it took five years for Mayweather-Pacquiao to materialize was particularly aggravating because it was fairly obvious that unless Pacquiao clipped Mayweather at some point – always a possibility (see round four) – Mayweather would be too smart, and even at 38, too effective defensively, too quick and too skilled to lose to the comparatively limited Filipino superstar.

The odds of Alvarez losing to Golovkin are much greater. Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) is a punishing puncher who could become the first fighter to stop Alvarez. He’s also 34, hasn’t faced anywhere near the level of opposition Alvarez has on his record and has defensive deficiencies another puncher could exploit.

Based on what we all witnessed during the Golovkin-Brook bout, if Alvarez, a ?-? favorite, beats England’s Smith (23-0-1, 13 KOs) for the WBO world super welterweight title, he should tell De La Hoya he wants to fight Golovkin in May. He shouldn’t ask De La Hoya.

Asking his promoter what to do has left Alvarez with a damaged legacy and made him the top target of embarrassed Mexican fans who demand more from their typically ambitious, fearless fighters.

What they should all agree upon – again, assuming all goes well tonight – is that there wouldn’t be a faster way to pay off the $8.5 million in damages Alvarez owes former promoter Felix “Tutico” Zabala Jr. for breach of contract than to fight Golovkin after fighting another Smith-level opponent in December. Canelo-Golovkin doesn’t make business sense for December because it’s a terrible time to run pay-per-view events, especially after there will have been three pay-per-view shows over a nine-week span, beginning tonight.

But Canelo-Golovkin on May 6 makes perfect sense. That would do incredible business on Cinco de Mayo weekend in Las Vegas or somewhere else.

And after an uneven year beset by mismatches and mostly main events that don’t deserve the pay-per-view platform, the boxing industry needs Canelo-Golovkin to happen sooner rather than later just as much as Alvarez.

Unfortunately, if tonight’s HBO Pay-Per-View show is somewhat successful – let’s say 350,000 buys – and a crowd in excess of 40,000 packs Jerry Jones’ AT&T Stadium, that’ll only encourage De La Hoya to find an opponent other than Golovkin after Alvarez plows through a stay-busy bout against a huge underdog sometime in December.

De La Hoya won’t offer an apology for that, either. Not even to the man who really deserves one.

Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.