The results of the September 16th Saul Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady Golovkin fight may have been unsatisfactory to fans with it being scored as a 12 round draw, but the fight was a huge success in terms of the money it made at the gate for their fight at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Of the 17,318 tickets sold for the Canelo-GGG fight, it brought in $27,059,850, according to Dan Rafael. That puts the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight at 3rd place in the biggest gates for boxing history.
Here are the biggest gates in the sport:
1. Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao on May 2, 2015: $72,198,500
2. Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor on August 26: $55,414,865.79
3. Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady Golovkin: $27,059,850
4. Mayweather vs. Canelo in 2013: $20,003,150
GGG was seen as the winner of the Canelo-Golovkin fight. The judges that were picked out by the Nevada State Athletic Commission, Adelaide Byrd, Don Trella and Dave Moretti, scored the fight 118-110 for Canelo, 114-114, and 115-113 for Golovkin. A lot of the boxing fans think Canelo was saved from a loss due to his popularity rather than on what he did during the fight. Canelo has been involved in 2 of the 4 biggest gates in the history of boxing.
Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler is working to try and get a rematch against Canelo, but it won’t happen until next year. Canelo has taken the rest of 2017 off. The date that Loeffler is looking to setup the rematch between Canelo and Golovkin is on May 5, 2018 on Cinco de Mayo, the Mexican holiday. It’s still too early to know whether the Canelo-Golovkin fight will take place in May. The date obviously favors Canelo with it taking place on a Mexican holiday.
Canelo is from Mexico. Golden Boy wants to stage the Canelo-Golovkin rematch in Las Vegas once again, which you can argue would slant things in Canelo’s favor even more so. Golovkin is said to prefer the rematch take place in another city rather than Vegas, but it’s likely that Golden Boy will get their way for the venue and the date for the Canelo vs. Golovkin rematch.
If the judges had scored the Canelo-GGG fight the way that the boxing public saw it, then it would have given Golovkin and Loeffler more ability to negotiate on an even playing field, but that didn’t happen. The judges scored it a draw, saving Canelo from a loss. Golovkin is in the same boat as before with him having to fight on a Mexican holiday against Canelo back in Vegas once again.
In the Canelo-Golovkin rematch, you can imagine tickets will be priced at a higher value. There’s no Mayweather vs. McGregor fight to compete with them. You’ve got to hope that Mayweather doesn’t get the desire to make a comeback and then staging his fight right in front of the Canelo vs. Golovkin rematch like he did with his event fight against McGregor in staging it on August 26. If Mayweather did that again, it would be a joke. How many times can Mayweather keep doing that? I don’t think it would be a good idea for Mayweather to fight another UFC guy, because he’d be making a mockery of his career, but that’s his thing. But if Mayweather does decide to come back and foul up the Canelo-Golovkin rematch, he can certainly do it. There are a lot of UFC fighters for Mayweather to fight in a boxing ring. It’s hard to imagine MMA and boxing fans wanting to continue to purchase fights like this.
It’s nice that the Canelo vs. Triple G fight brought in a lot of money in ticket sales. Now it’s time to see whether the fight brought in a ton of pay-per-view sales on HBO PPV. Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya had predicted the fight would pull in 3 million buys. It doesn’t look like it’s going to go that high. 2 million buys is what’s being predicted for the Canelo and GGG fight. 2M is obviously far away from the expected 4.4 million that is being talked about for the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight, but Canelo-GGG was different type of fight.
It was as Golovkin says a “true fight” in talking about his fight with Canelo. Mayweather vs. McGregor was more of an event that is described by a lot of boxing fans as more of an exhibition bout rather than a real one. McGregor had never fought before in boxing match, and he was still given a boxing license to fight as a professional by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. The Commission sanctioned the Mayweather-McGregor fight, so it counted as a real professional fight, which allowed Mayweather to win his 50th fight of his career.
The tickets for the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao and Mayweather vs. McGregor fight were quite expensive for the lackluster action both fights provided for the fans. Pacquiao was injured with a bad shoulder injury, and he couldn’t do much against Mayweather. For his part, Mayweather fought defensively did a lot of moving and playing it safe against Pacquiao in the Mayweather-McGregor fight, Mayweather fought in a reserved manner, like he was fighting at a slow pace to carry McGregor.
When the fight reached the 10th round, Mayweather suddenly started throwing punches, and the fight was stopped shortly after that. It looked planned on Mayweather’s part for him to fight like this. The fight was better than the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight, but not much better. It was still boring.
