Once again, the business side of boxing and promotions has robbed us of another great fight. Although Gennady Golovkin was willing to move up to 168 to fight the often heavy Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., the business side of boxing has reared it’s ugly face and has shut this fight down; at least for this summer. Given differing financial and business interests, Top Rank and Chavez (48-1-1, 32 KO’s) can’t come to an agreement for a July 19th date with Golovkin (29-0, 26 KO’s). This is very unfortunate for boxing fans because it is a middleweight monster of a fight.
Unfortunately, Top Rank and and Chavez can’t come to a financial agreement. They want Chavez to sign an extension of his contract, and in doing so would have offered him a much more lucrative deal to fight the dangerous Golovkin. According to the Los Angeles Times, “The deal was for $7 million, and if he’d do one more fight, we’d pay him a minimum of $5 million if he lost, or a minimum of $10 million if he won,” Arum said. “They said no, so we offered them $2 million-plus, plus the upside [of pay-per-view sales.] They wouldn’t take the risk. In my opinion, the fight is off.”
Given Chavez’ obvious desire to be a free agent, Bob Arum said Top Rank has too much to risk financially if they offer Chavez such a large purse and also lose one of their biggest stars in the process with his contract coming to an end. This along with the fact the fight would have been one week after the Canelo Alvarez and Erislandy Lara fight on July 12th, just made the July 19th date for Chavez and Golovkin too much for Top Rank to pull off, or even want to.
Gennady Golovkin will look to find someone else to fight in July (likely another tune-up fight) in hopes of working out the Chavez deal later this year; otherwise, he will have to look elsewhere for another big name. Personally, I would love to see him fight the winner of the June fight between Sergio Martinez and Miguel Cotto. Given those guys are essentially free agents, that fight could legitimately happen. Anyways, this haul to the Chavez vs. Golovkin fight is just one more hiccup preventing Chavez Jr. and Golovkin from becoming true superstars.
Hey, at least we have Marquez vs. Alvarado in a week. That should keep us significantly passified for little while.