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Well which one dropped a belt to avoid fighting the other?
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The touted split was 55/45, which was a puzzle to me cos I couldn't figure out where it came from although it appeared in numerous articles at the time.
In fact the split for all challengers was 70/30 from the 2011 rules onwards. You gotta go back to 2009 to find the 45/55 split for interims as far as I've been able to tell and even there it's discretionary.
Section c is omitted for all revisions of the rules upto and including the 2015 revision which the bout was made under.
Not quite sure who began with that 55/45 idea but it was innaccurate. Ain't saying 70/30 was reasonable necessarily either, just that I've seen a lotta folk using 40 or 45 to justify Canelo dropping the belt. Way I see it the fight ultimately happened exactly when Oscar said it would back in early 2015 'In a couple of years'. Not sure we need to look too much deeper than that.
Guaranteed purses for GGG vs Canelo I seem to have been $5 mil for Canelo and $3 mil for Golovkin best I can tell, or 62.5 / 37.5... which is higher than GGG would have been guaranteed under WBC rules back in 2016.
In fact I don't recall Canelo or Oscar saying it was about the money at all, merely that they wouldn't be constrained by 'unreasonable time limits' (despite having promised to fight GGG next)... could be mistaken but best I remember the money / split thing came from reporters and/or fans who ran with it.
-best I've been able to tell the 55/45 figure first appeared in this Rafael article but I could be wrong.
https://www.espn.co.uk/boxing/story/...adline-looming
It was reported that the WBC increased the standard mandatory split because Golovkin was a fellow champion. It was basically a BS arbitrary set of circumstances created by the WBC. Trying to force a unification immediately after a fighter becomes champ is already overstepping their boundaries from standard protocol, but the way they went about it gave the leverage to GGG over their own champ, because GGG was facing no such pressure to make the fight by the WBA on his end, so even if all he did was hold out, he'd be guaranteed an inflated purse he did nothing to deserve or a belt he did nothing to earn.
Canelo did what most fighters in his position would have done and dumped the belt so that he'd be free to negotiate as the A side, and the two camps remained in talks until the deal was hammered out. It's not like GGG is a guy who jumps on first offers either-- his team was asking for a sizable split but realized they had no leverage to make such demands so in the meantime faced guys like Brook and Jacobs to make some decent paydays and increase their status/leverage, basically what he should have been doing with his career all along as his highest profile opponent prior to that had been Lemieux who's closer to gatekeeper than elite. That's what you call building a fight and it happened within a perfectly reasonable timeframe for a unification, but the GGG fanboys tried to twist things as usual because his legacy depends on spinning narratives.Comment
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The 1 that dropped the belt AFTER he claimed he wanted to fight him, cause you know, mexicans dont **** around....Comment
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Andre ward is one of the most boring fighters in history. His fights are snoozers. You actually want to watch an Andre Ward fight on a Saturday night??? No thanks.Comment
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The WBC never changed the split. They never even made a call on it because Canelo vacated before it came to that. The reporting was innaccurate or possibly deliberately false. The WBCs rules said 70/30 with discretion to modify and I've even linked 'em for evidence. Leastways that's all I've been able to find, please correct me if you can find somewhere where the WBC ever said they were requiring Canelo to give up a larger split of his purse.
Like I say the claim of 55/45 appears to have originated with Rafael, but is innaccurate (in fact he uses the term 'usually' 55/45, but TBH Champ vs Interim fights are actually vansihingly rare and as I pointed out under the 2011 rules onwards it's 70/30)
Listen personally, I think Canelo and Oscar were wise to wait, I don't think in terms of 'ducking' or bullchit like that, but I am fond of getting to the bottom of little puzzles like this... it's more like an intellectual challenge. And in this case the evidence available points to Oscar and Canelo just having prefered to delay the fight - as, of course, was their right as soon as they dropped the belt. I've no issue with 'em waiting - and in fact the fight happened entirely in the timeframe Oscar had laid out even before Canelo became a Champ at 160. All I'm saying is that the idea Canelo vacated over an unfair purse split is demonstrably just smoke.Last edited by Citizen Koba; 09-09-2020, 01:53 AM.Comment
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I don’t remember G dropping a belt and switching weight classes to avoid Ward..Comment
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