Gennady “GGG” Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler is looking to negotiate a rematch against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez for Cowboys Stadium rather than Las Vegas, Nevada. Loeffler likes the idea of staging the Canelo-GGG fight in front of a crowd of 100,000 boxing fans at Cowboys Stadium.
The second fight will be a tiebreaker being that Canelo and Triple G fought to a 12-round draw on September 16 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Canelo used a lot of movement for 12 rounds to avoid the “Mexican style” type of fight that Golovkin wanted from him. Loeffler points out that Golovkin made Canelo use movement for 12 rounds, as he’d never done that before in any of his fights.
Canelo had always been the aggressor until the Golovlkin. Canelo did briefly attack Golovkin in the first minute of rounds 10, 11 and 12, but ONLY in the first minute of those 3-minute rounds. After the first minute, Canelo’s face seemed to turn red from exhaustion of him fighting hard. He then would spend the last 2 minutes fighting with his back against the ropes like he’d done in the first 9 rounds.
The judges that gave Canelo rounds 10, 11 and 12 appeared to score the rounds after the 1-minute mark instead of waiting for the entire 3-minute round to play out, because he did nothing after in the last two-thirds of those rounds.
Canelo is familiar with the Cowboys in Arlington, because he fought there just last year in fight against WBO junior middleweight champion Liam Smith. They pulled in over 50,000 fans for the fight. This was Canelo fighting a guy that was a complete unknown to the casual boxing fans in the States. Liam Smith isn’t even popular in his home country of the UK.
In the U.S, he was virtual unknown, and yet over 50,000 fans showed up to see the Canelo-Smith fight on September 17 at Cowboys Stadium. If that many fans were willing to pay to see Canelo fight Liam Smith, you can imagine how many would come to see him fight Golovkin.
Loeffler and Golovkin had an unpleasant experience fighting in Vegas with the set of judges that were selected for the fight. However, the money a rematch in Las Vegas can make for Canelo, Golovkin and Golden Boy Promotions will be difficult to pass up.
The judging for the Canelo-Golovkin fight at the T-Mobile in Las Vegas wasn’t quality in Golovkin’s view, and he would like not to fight there again for the rematch.
Canelo and Golovkin fought on September 16. The fight was scored a 12-round draw, but it was viewed by the boxing public as a win for Golovkin. Whether the judges’ scoring was influenced by them being biased in impossible to say. All you can say is the 118-110 score for Canelo and the 114-114 scores were out of range for the fight that took place that night. One judge seemed be in line with the way the boxing public viewed the fight. That was the judge that scored it 115-113 for Golovkin.
“I think Cowboys Stadium would be great, being with 100,000 people at Cowboys Stadium would be a fantastic boxing event. Las Vegas is hard to beat economically because it’s a big party all week in Vegas,” Loeffler said to ESPN Deportes via the World Boxing Council convention in Azerbaijan.
Vegas worked out so well for Canelo in the GGG fight that it might be hard for Golden Boy to pass up a second time. With the way the 2 of the judges scored the fight by not giving Canelo a loss, why mess with what works.
Golden Boy and Canelo are likely going to have things there way when it comes to the venue for the fight. It’s unlikely that Loeffler is going to be able to make a deal to have the rematch staged outside of Las Vegas. He’s going to give it his best shot obviously, but the way that Golden Boy president Eric Gomez was talking recently, it doesn’t look like he’s going to budge on this issue.
“We have no problem with Las Vegas or Nevada, said Loeffler. ”The MGM group treated us wonderfully. The T-Mobile is a big arena. Kenny Bayless did a great job as a referee, Dave Moretti (judge) saw GGG win (115-113) , I have no problem, only one judge (Adalaide Byrd, 118-110) was wide for Canelo and the other gave a tie (Don Trella, 114-114),” said Loeffler.
It would be interesting to see if Golden Boy and Canelo gives in to Golovkin and lets the fight take place at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas. In a sense of fairness, Team Golovkin deserves to have the rematch staged in a place that they prefer. You can’t say that having the fight in Texas really favors Golovkin though. Having the rematch staged in Texas would help Canelo more than it would Golovkin, because a lot of the fans would be coming to see him fight rather than GGG. A venue that would really help Golovkin would be to stage the second fight in New York. It’s not probable that Loeffler will be able to get the Canelo-GGG rematch staged in New York. I don’t see that happening even if they fought 100 times.
WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman ordered the rematch between Canelo and Golovkin on Monday. Here’s what Sulaiman had to say about the fight:
“Today the WBC orders a second clash between Gennady Golovkin and Saúl ‘Canelo’ Álvarez, it is the fight that the world wants to see. It is the fight that the two fighters want to have. They have expressed it publicly and that is why we have decided to give it to the world the fight we want.
Gennady had to wait two years to get to the big scene that was what happened on September 16 against Canelo Alvarez. He came to the ring with the WBC green and gold belt and proudly defended in one of the best fights we’ve seen in years,” said Sulaiman.
Canelo chose not to fight for the WBC title. He didn’t want to fight for that belt. Instead, Canelo only fought for the IBF, IBO and WBA titles.