by David P. Greisman
The powers-that-be in boxing don’t make their decisions with consistency in mind. Their choices are a matter of convenience.
There’s a turn of phrase that is cutesy, cliché and still too true: If it makes dollars, it makes sense. That’s why HBO’s broadcast of Gennady Golovkin’s latest win came to a close the way it did.
The post-fight interview with Golovkin included another question about a potential fight with Canelo Alvarez — a fight that is desired but is not yet definite. The broadcast then ended and the network transitioned into HBO marketing a pay-per-view of a bout that is definite but less desired — Alvarez’s fight with Amir Khan.
Golovkin has been waiting for a big fight against the top middleweights for nearly three years now. He’s actually been waiting longer, but the momentum toward such a clash truly began as HBO realized it had a star on his hands and more boxing fans realized how good Golovkin might be and how much he deserved a chance to prove it.
Golovkin’s had one fellow titleholder since then: David Lemieux, who stepped up for a pay-per-view last October and was ultimately stopped, demonstrating why too few others have been as willing as Lemieux was. Everyone else has been contenders, former titleholders and eager but lower-level opponents.
The latest of the latter was Dominic Wade, who was undefeated but unheralded. Wade’s biggest victory over Sam Soliman, who was 41 at the time and coming off a very brief stint as a middleweight titleholder. Wade won that one by split decision. That’s not what landed him the shot at Golovkin. It merely put him high enough in one sanctioning body’s rankings to benefit after Golovkin’s intended opponent, Tureano Johnson, suffered an injury in training camp. Wade was the next available contender and was made the new mandatory challenger.
Wade played his role. He talked up his chances of winning and talked down Golovkin.
“All I think he’s got is his strength,” Wade said in February. “Other than that, he’s basic.”
And Wade played his other role. He was done in less than two rounds, dropped by a right hand in the first, hurt by a left uppercut in the second and on the canvas soon after, and finished with another right hand.
“His power is real,” Wade admitted afterward.
It was a mismatch, one that didn’t necessarily need to be broadcast. The powers-that-be in boxing don’t make their decisions with consistency in mind. Their choices are a matter of convenience.
And so while various leaks and rumors over the years have suggested that HBO didn’t want to pay for Andre Ward to face lesser opponents, that’s exactly what the network did with Golovkin (and has done with others, though it’s not the only network to do so). It paid for Golovkin vs. Wade even while there have been leaks and rumors about HBO not wanting to pay for more competitive clashes involving other fighters due to budget cuts.
That’s the network’s prerogative. If it makes dollars, it makes sense. And so its decisions are sometimes based on maintaining relationships with fighters, managers and promoters, on furthering certain storylines, on spotlighting certain stars, or on featuring boxers who get good ratings even if the fight itself isn’t significant.
And so while there was pressure over the past couple years for Andre Ward to move up from super middleweight to face light heavyweight titleholder Sergey Kovalev — a fight that is likely to happen later this year —Golovkin hasn’t yet been forced to make the move from 160 to 168.
Fighters aren’t required to jump from one division to another. If they wish to stay in the division where they are most comfortable and most competitive until they are ready to grow into a higher weight class, then that should be acceptable.
Some fans don’t care. Some will tune in and watch no matter what. Golovkin does pretty good ratings for modern day premium cable boxing broadcasts, and he also sells tickets on both coasts of the United States.
Others want to see the best fighters take on the biggest challenges and further prove their greatness. We expect them to blow away their foes when we’d be just as impressed if other boxers merely picked up a victory. We want them to go up in weight, potentially bite off more than they can chew and either go down in the history books or go down fighting.
The inconsistencies bother us. We follow the business, but we are fans of the sport. The business tends to get in the way of the sport.
And so it bothered us when the business meant that fighters aligned with Al Haymon and featured on Showtime and/or “Premier Boxing Champions” weren’t going to be able to fight those aligned with HBO and certain promoters. We’ve had no fight between Kovalev and Adonis Stevenson due to their respective affiliations and interests and political maneuverings. We had no bout between Golovkin and Haymon’s major middleweights.
But even when there were no political obstacles, we’ve been without a fight between Golovkin, who is consensus the top 160-pounder in the world, and the men who by virtue solely of who they beat were considered the lineal middleweight champion. Miguel Cotto toppled a hobbled Sergio Martinez and then stayed clear of Golovkin. Alvarez defeated Cotto, says he’ll face Golovkin someday but otherwise made a deal with Golovkin — and the World Boxing Council, which mandated Canelo vs. Golovkin — for interim bouts. HBO wants it to happen, but there’s still no guarantee.
Canelo vs. Golovkin could still occur. And there seems to now be a greater possibility of Haymon’s fighters appearing on HBO since, well, it’s happening in isolated instances. Amir Khan is facing Alvarez. Wade is an Al Haymon guy.
Golovkin’s team had mentioned a move up to 168 in the past for fights with guys like Carl Froch and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., though not for Andre Ward back he was still a super middleweight. As always, it’s not about consistency but about convenience, about the dollars making sense.
We should just want good fights to happen, not good reasons for them not to happen. We should want the networks to broadcast the memorable and not merely the inevitable.
As with food, sometimes we end up with second choices that aren’t as satisfying. Sometimes they leave bad tastes in our mouth.
We, like Golovkin, want better. He and those who work with him need to make that happen. Any more fighters who go down easy will be hard to stomach.
“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
