Middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler isn’t agreeable to a flat fee for the Golovkin vs. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez fight in September 2017. Loeffler is looking to get a percentage split for GGG, which obviously would bring him a lot more money than if he agrees to the eight-figure flat fee offer than Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya offered Golovkin for the fight.
“A flat fee for a fight is usually given to a fighter or contender who’s clearly the ‘B’ side,” Loeffler said to the latimes.com. “My offer back to [Golden Boy] was based on a percentage, just like we saw in the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao agreement.”
This is the same percentage split deal that Pacquiao got against Mayweather last year. Mayweather originally offered Pacquiao a flat fee of $40 million. If Pacquiao had agreed to the deal, he would have wound up with far less money than what he made for their fight last year. Pacquiao agreed to a 60-40 deal, and reportedly wound up making more than $100 million for their ‘Fight of the Century’ match in Las Vegas, Nevada.
If Loeffler can get a similar deal for the Canelo fight, then it would be a huge payday for Golovkin. It would also benefit Canelo by him taking the fight, considering he’s not going to get a payday like that against any of the existing fighters in boxing.
There’s no one left for Canelo to get a big payday against unless he moves up to light heavyweight to fight the winner of the Sergey Kovalev vs. Andre Ward fight. I don’t think Canelo or Golden Boy would do that. It would be too dangerous for him. That’s why Canelo and Golden Boy needs to give Golovkin the money he and his promoter Tom Loeffler are asking for if they want the big payday that will come with the fight.
If Golovkin and Loeffler agreed to a flat fee of say $10 million, then if the fight made a ton of money, they wouldn’t be sharing. If Golovkin can get a 55-45 split of the revenue, he would come out a lot better than just taking $10 million. For example, if the fight brought in $200 million, then Golovkin would be getting $90 million. That would seem to be a fair deal. If Golovkin takes the $10 million flat fee that De La Hoya is offering him, then Canelo would walk away with $190 million. That’s not a fair deal for Golovkin.
Loeffler is working on negotiating a fight between Golovkin and WBA “regular” middleweight champion Daniel Jacobs for December 10 at Madison Square Garden in New York. If Golovkin can beat Jacobs, then his stock will go up considerably. This would mean an even bigger cut of the revenue than he could reasonably ask for if he negotiated the fight against Canelo right now.
Additionally, if Golovkin can beat WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders in early 2017, it would further increase his bargaining power for a Canelo fight. However, it’s going to be a lot harder to get Saunders to agree to a fight against Triple G, because Canelo and Golden Boy will likely be working hard to get that fight before Golovkin can. Saunders is a similar fighter to former WBO junior middleweight champion Liam Smith in terms of talent or lack thereof.
Canelo would have a very good chance of beating Saunders even if he were one-handed like he was for the Liam Smith fight after hurting his right hand in round two. Canelo would have greater bargaining power to get Saunders for himself than Golovkin can, being that he can have the Canelo-Saunders fight televised on HBO pay-per-view in the States.
Golovkin couldn’t sell a fight against Saunders in the U.S, because few boxing fans would purchase it. Canelo can because he’ll stage the fight in May 2017 on the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo, and wind up with a lot of passive pay-per-view buys from his fans purchasing his fight not because of the match-up, but rather just to see Canelo on an important holiday.
You can argue that De La Hoya might not be serious about wanting to offer Golovkin the Canelo fight right now, but he might have been forced to out of necessity of going into a damage control mode due to the huge amount of criticism that has been leveled as Canelo for failing to take the fight against Golovkin.
By De La Hoya telling the boxing media that he’s made an offer to Golovkin’s management for the fight, it makes him look like he’s trying to actively negotiate the fight, even if the offer isn’t a serious one. By offering Golovkin a flat fee amount for the Canelo fight, it would seem that De La Hoya isn’t serious about wanting to make the fight happen right now. If De La Hoya is actually thinks Golovkin’s management would ever agree to a flat fee lump sum, then it suggest that he’s underestimated them and he sees him being in a position of power where he can make those kinds of offers.
De La Hoya can obviously get away with offering Canelo’s lesser known and less talented opponents a flat fee for a fight against him, because they would readily take it just to have the payday and a chance to fight him. But when you’re talking about a star like Golovkin, it comes across as almost disrespectful of him, his management and the amount of boxing fans that he’ll bring to the table for the fight by offering a flat fee to him.
It wouldn’t be surprising to me to hear De La Hoya next give Golovkin and Loeffler a deadline for them to agree to the flat fee eight-figure lump sum that he offered for the Canelo fight. It would probably play out well to the boxing public to hear De La Hoya saying that Golovkin has a set deadline to accept the deal or else Canelo is going in another direction for all of his fights in 2017.
I would expect De La Hoya then to wave an olive branch by saying that a fight between Canelo and Golovkin might be possible in 2018 if they can sit down to the table and start new negotiations. I think at some point, perhaps when Golovkin is older and almost over-the-hill, De La Hoya will have a sense of urgency to make the Canelo-Golovkin fight. Of course, Golovkin’s bargaining power will be long gone by then, and so will the money that the fight would have made if De La Hoya had just given Golovkin a percentage split from the very start so that the fight could be negotiated quickly.
