By Keith Idec
NEW YORK – There were times, Daniel Jacobs admits, that even he wasn’t sure if the biggest fight of his boxing career would get made.
There were certain things he sought before agreeing to challenge Gennady Golovkin for middleweight supremacy. It took more than two months of negotiations, but ultimately Jacobs was comfortable with the terms of an agreement to fight Golovkin in an HBO Pay-Per-View main event March 18 at Madison Square Garden.
He knew fans were getting frustrated as the process dragged along. It also was frustrating for Jacobs to not publicly divulge the things, beyond getting the asking price he won’t discuss, that were holding up an agreement.
Now that it’s a done deal, though, Jacobs is thankful that representatives for him and Golovkin were patient enough to make sure that their big fight didn’t fall apart.
“In boxing, obviously you know the hard part is the business side of it,” Jacobs told a group of reporters recently at the Brooklyn Nets’ training facility. “That’s the side a lot of the fans don’t get to see, and that’s the most frustrating part. Yeah, it took a while. And quite honestly, I didn’t know if the fight was gonna be made because it took so long.
“And going into purse bid, I knew I didn’t want that 75-25 split. So we were really just trying to work it, and I let my team handle it the best way we can. Al Haymon, Brett Yormark, Keith Connolly, everybody who played a part in negotiating for me or representing me, in a sense. They’ve done a phenomenal job. I’m happy with the dotted line, per se. I’m just looking forward to doing my part.”
The WBA had ordered a Golovkin-Jacobs purse bid for December 19 at its office in Panama City, Panama. An agreement was reached several days earlier, though, which enabled Kazakhstan’s Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs), the WBA “super” middleweight champion, and Brooklyn’s Jacobs (32-1, 29 KOs), the WBA world middleweight title-holder, to announce the fight through their social media accounts December 17.
Jacobs’ attorney, Keith Connolly, petitioned the WBA for better than the traditional 75-25 purse split for mandated championship matches, but the request was denied. The two sides resumed negotiations thereafter and hammered out a deal.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
