Golden Boy Promotions’ boss Oscar De La Hoya has announced that he’s reached a deal for IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin (38-0-1, 34 KOs) to defend against Saul Canelo Alvarez (49-1-2, 34 KOs) in a rematch on September 15. Without going into details on the particulars of the percentage split, De La Hoya announced the news of the Golovkin-Canelo II fight getting done for the 15th of September on HBO pay-per-view.
The way that Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler is speaking, it appears that GGG was able to get the purse split that he was looking to get with the 55-45 split that he was requesting for the fight. Golden Boy Promotions offered GGG a 42.5 percent split in response to him dropping down from 50-50 to 55-45. Golden Boy wanted GGG to agree to a 60-40 split after they originally offered him a 65-35.
After Canelo tested positive for clenbuterol twice and then dropped out of their May 5th fight, Golovkin no longer felt that a 65/35 split was a fair one. He lost out on a big payday for the May 5th fight and instead received just $1 million in fighting Vanes Martirosyan on that date. Golovkin also lost out on his fight last December because Canelo wanted to rest up until May before fighting him again.
”I’m happy to inform that we have a fight September 15th!!! #Canelo-GGG2,” De La Hoya said on his social media site.
Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler says that if the rematch with Canelo didn’t get made, GGG was planning on fighting unbeaten WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders (26-0, 12 KOs) in his next fight. The fight would have made a lot of sense for Golovkin, because he would have been able to add a third title after being stripped of his International Boxing Federation middleweight strap last week by the IBF after he failed to commit to facing his mandatory challenger Sergiy Derevyanchenko by August 3.
”Loeffler said GGG was dead set to take a unification with Billy Joe Saunders if Canelo didn’t budge. “’He stuck to his principles,’” Lance Pugmire said on his Twiter. ”Didn’t reveal new terms but said ‘the deal was dead at noon, Eric Gomez came back with a solution that satisfied … purse percentage was a main factor,” for GGG to approve.”
It really sounds like Canelo budged on the 55-45 deal that Golovkin was asking for. It’s still a good deal for Canelo even if he did agree to that purse split, because if he didn’t take the fight, he would have had to fight Daniel Jacobs or else he would have been hounded by the boxing fan for not fighting Triple G again.