Comments Thread For: Canelo's Trainer To Golovkin: Come To 155, We'll Fight!

[meme_man]

Just came in to say...YUP!

Family about to arrive so Happy Thanksgiving boys/girls. Be safe.

Happy thanksgiving to you Fetta..

[ИATAS]

Most people don't know that back in the day, champions did this all the time in the late 1800s and the turn of the century

Middleweight was more like 154-156 at the champions discretion where the weight was

Featherweight was closer to 118

lightheavyweight didn't exist so middleweights fought heavies regularly


its amazing how people act like catchweight fights are a new trend. They have been around over 100 years in boxing.

Here is an article I found on catchweights

“Catchweight” or “contract weight” fights of course began long before Sully penned his challenges to his peers of the day, but to hear today’s typical boxing fan on a rant, catchweights are killing boxing when extra title belts and promoters ain’t killing boxing.

“If we could just get back to one belt and only the best fighting the best when men were men and on and on, over and over,” and so it goes on life’s wonderful merry-go-round.

Well, to be clear, the average fight fan is a rather unstudied lot, but then boxing as a business does little to educate the public as to the history of the sport, so in context, it is as it always was and forever shall be.

Promoters of course love catchweights for expanding the pool of prospective matchups that can be made and fighters themselves often jump when a lucrative opportunity presents itself, so let’s take a look at some of the bigger “catchweight” fights.

Kid Lavigne@131.5 vs Joe Walcott@131.5

Staged December 2nd, 1895 in Queens, New York, Barbados Joe Walcott was a squat, blocky welterweight in need of a big fight, so enter the manager of undefeated The Saginaw Kid Lavigne with a catchweight offer at 15 rounds, won by Lavigne by way of another stipulation of lasting the distance. Walcott’s manager put all his money in Walcott knocking out Lavigne. Keep in mind that the welter and lightweight limits were less by a few pounds than they are today and Walcott was coming off an open bout needing no weight limit and was at 138 lbs for that bout. They staged the rematch 2 yrs later with the Kid doing the honors, knocking out Barbados Joe who weighed 135 lbs for this bout.

Joe Gans@131 vs Battling Nelson@131lbs
Nelson vs Gans
Nelson vs Gans

This was Tex Rickard’s first big fight that established him as one of the greatest promoters ever, and what a dandy it was. Staged September 3rd, 1906 in the Nevada gold mining town of Goldfield, Rickard showcased the $33,000 purse as gold coins in the local bank’s store window, attracting the sporting crowds from all corners of the country.

Joe Gans was incrementally the bigger man, so Battling Nelson wouldn’t fight him without a weight stipulation of 131 lbs, being such a stickler that his camp insisted on weighing Gans at ringside just before the first bell. After 42 rounds of give and take action, Nelson had taken enough of a beating, delivering a blow so low and obvious that he was disqualified. Now I see Boxrec has “edited” the weights again along with the purse, so now the account of the fight is in disagreement with their record, but such are the always moving goalposts of boxing history. The point remains, Gans/Nelson fight is always reported as a catchweight fight.

Harry Lewis@149 vs Johnny Summers@141

Lewis vs Summers
Lewis vs Summers

Harry Lewis is an undersung fighter who held a portion of the welterweight title after the turn of the century. Staged January 25th, 1911 in London, England, the contracted weight was 144 lbs. Lewis was well over and paid a forfeit before knocking out Summers in the 4th round. He then announced he was moving up to middleweight where he finished his career. Fight conditions were very similar to the Mayweather/Marquez bout.

Henry Armstrong@142 vs Ceferino Garcia@153½

The Battle

Staged March 1st, 1940, this is a storied bout touted as Armstrong’s attempt to claim his 4th belt, but the truth of the matter is that only the state of California appeared to recognize the title, which, surprise, was split to smithereens! I see no indication it was reported as a catchweight fight, but I included it because in essence the conditions were near mirror image of the Pacquiao/Margarito fight.

Armstrong was well below the welter limit as was Pacquiao, and lifelong welterweight Garcia well below the middle limit, as was the Margarito career and weight. Some important differences are that Garcia did actually hold a portion of the middle title as recognized by the NYASC by beating Fred Apostoli, but the California fight was only for 10 rds, Another difference is the era with fighters like Margarito enhanced by modern weigh-in rules that give them as much as 36 hours to replenish fluids and nutrients before the fight. Margarito weighed a reported 167lbs in the ring, dwarfing Armstrong, Pacquiao, Garcia and most pre 90s middleweights in size.

Sugar Ray Leonard@165 vs Donny Lalonde@167

Staged at Ceasars PalaceNovember 7th in Las Vegas, Nevada, this fight had all the media hype of a typical Leonard fight plus much more thanks to creative manipulations by the WBC that allowed Leonard to challenge for both the supermiddleweight and LaLonde’s lightheavy title simultaneously in spite of neither making the LH limit. The well drained LaLonde was coming on strong, on the verge of knocking out Leonard before visibly running out of steam and being flattened in the 9th round. It was a good scrap, but emblematic of the extremes of what “catchweight” fights can go to. LaLonde was never the same after this, campaigning at cruiserweight to finish out his career.

Oscar De La Hoya@155 vs Bernard Hopkins@156

Staged September 18th, 2004 at the MGM Grand, Las Vegas, Nevada, the catchweight was actually at 158lbs, but Hopkins, having given up near every concession to the Goldenboy of boxing, got in his first shot early on by scaling in 2lbs below the contracted weight. He got in the last shot as well, flooring the surprisingly competitive De La Hoya with a left hook to the liver that kept him down for the 10 count in the 9th round.

Pretty much similar to the history of the thousands of catchweight fights in that there was seldom any controversy over the catchweight. That is until that modern subspecies, The Shiny Crusted **** Petardis, started streaming(screaming) into cyberspace.

So now with promoters aware that even a minor controversy sells, it looks like catchweights will be proliferating for better or worse into the foreseeable future of boxing.

Not one person is dis*****g catchweights being a part of boxing numb nuts. The issue here is you have the lineal and WBC middleweight title holder demanding a 155 catchweight against his MANDATORY opponent, where obviously no catchweight is required should there be a purse bid.

[The Big Dunn]

Im not avoiding anything. The word "obstacle" is subjective. You can claim its not a "mandatory" all you want, but in fact it is. All the other examples you point to are voluntary fights, where guys made decisions to do something or not based on only the money. Fine, if a guy wants to ********** himself for a few bucks in an optional fight, who cares? Certainly not me. But is being a mandatory challenger officially now lost all its meaning? Is everything just a popularity contest? Boxing has always been full of ****, but at least mandos sometimes could straighten things out. Sure, sometimes they are garbage (Hopkins-Hakkar for example), but the mando was always the avenue for the lesser known fighters to even the playing field a bit. Now even mandos it seems are turning into glorified auctions.

Bottom line, if GGG feels he can make the concession to 155 and stil be effective, thats his choice. I just find it pathetic that its even on the table. And what makes it even worse is people cheering it, simply because the fighter in question is a bit lighter than they prefer.

And you can pretend that doesnt factor in, but who are you trying to kid?

I didn't say it wasn't just to say it, I said as the WBA super champ, that would supersede the mando.

No, all of those fights I listed were for the lineal titles in those divisions-they just also happen to be lucrative paydays as well.

No, I think being the mando still means a lot. That said, this really isn't about the belt, its more about GGG becoming a mainstream star. with or without the belt most think he is the best MW in the world.

It's also HBO's marquee fight.

What we do not know is if he can beat a fighter on Canelo's level. Until we do, I think it is a barrier to him becoming the cross over star like a Canelo.

I certainly am not cheering it. As I said to DaddyT, most of us agree with you that it is completely bogus that its on the table. The difference is we are just accepting it as a reality of boxing because whether you are a Floyd, Manny, Bhop, Trinidad, Kov, Canelo, or Cotto fan, you've been on both sides of the coin.

Only SRL, ODH and Tyson and maybe wlad fans have never really had to deal with this situation.

If you are sure its race, consider this-was it race when all the non white fighters were faced with similar but not exactly the same situations? Americans, non-Americans just the same.

The practice is wrong OP, we agree. But the practice is a staple of the sport. More to the point it's the potholes fighters face when trying to become a cross over mega star.

It seems that you want GGG to be excluded from having to go through the same thing others have.

[Aztekkas]

Floyd would have fcked GGG at the table. He would have made 1-2 million tops and made him weigh in at 154

152.

[Amgwanagitbuti]

Nobody is saying the bigger draw shouldnt demand concessions in optional fights. But when that also extends to mandatories, then this sport has finally lost whatever shred of credibility it had left....

I think this is the larger picture. Without some form of transparency and structure in making fights, the sport might as well drop weight classes altogether.

In this case, the two athletes are of equal size. Canelo's demand for a CW is legalized cheating, an attempt to weaken GGG before the Kazakh steps into the ring. IMO it runs counter to the values of a boxing champion.

[RED REP]

This is BAD

The fight for the lenial MW title is at 160

Canelo better get it together or hand the title to GGG

The what? Linial?! Say again, the Linial?! Ermmm?

[HanzGruber]

Still doesn't make sense that canelo is draining himself. He's gonna drop the belt

[-PBP-]

Floyd would have fcked GGG at the table. He would have made 1-2 million tops and made him weigh in at 154

Lol. Word. Nobody makes $10-20M against Floyd unless your Pac. Imagine how bad a dude doing 97k would get destroyed.

He would get $2 mil tops and would come in at 152.

[Bardock]

you are expecting these idiots to understand anything? lol

All you need to know is the whiter guy is always wrong. Facts, context, details, none of that matters. The lightest guy is always in the wrong.

That should help you understand debating here at NSB.......

To be fair Canelo has whiter skin than GGG so there goes that logic

[RED REP]

Fight will be at 157 in September 2016.

GGG will fight Johnson, Canelo will fight a ranked MW.

If I was GGG I would fight at 157 in the next fight to see if he's comfortable.

This this this ^