News broke yesterday that Canelo Alvarez is indeed officially out of his should have been May 5th rematch of a super fight with Gennady Golovkin. Let’s take a look at all the fallout from that bit of major news.
First and foremost, I was very much wrong on this one. I do take some solace in knowing I was far from being alone in having this opinion, but I never expected this fight to be canceled or otherwise delayed because of these drug tests. I thought both that the event was worth too much money for the state of Nevada and that the Mexican meat contamination explanation was convenient enough to let it slide for the sake of that money. Even despite all the major media’s reports that the fight was not likely to go on, I still believed in the back of my mind that it would until the news broke. From a sporting perspective, delaying the fight at minimum is definitely the right thing versus putting on a potentially unfair contest to keep the money flowing. For once, boxing unexpectedly came through on that front.
Canelo Alvarez is maintaining is innocence in all of this. He continues to claim that “I have always been a clean fighter and I always will be a clean fighter.” The Nevada State Athletic Commission doesn’t care, however, as their rules make little distinction on whether or not an athlete took a banned substance knowingly or not, only that it showed up on a test. Golden Boy president Erik Gomez has openly admitted that the promotional company does not believe Canelo would have been cleared to fight if they had waited for the mid-April hearing. Plus, he noted that even if Canelo was cleared, the few week window would not have been enough to promote the fight.
The hope seems to be that Canelo Alvarez will be available to fight a this summer and then for the big fight to happen in the fall, but this is all talk at this point with nothing substantial to back it up. If the NSAC issues a one year suspension, that is obviously a non-starter. Maybe Canelo can go be apologetic in front of them and get a six month suspension backdated to a certain date that makes him available to fight in September. Even that possibility makes me wonder if he would want to fight Golovkin without a tune up first though.
As for Gennady Golovkin, he will still be fighting on May 5th. We have two issues here. For one, he is going to need a pretty short notice opponent. While there has been a lot of posturing on social media with fighters calling the unified middleweight titleholder out for the date, that is all nonsense that you should ignore. Early reports seem to indicate that Irish middleweight fringe contender Gary “Spike” O’Sullivan is the clubhouse leader for the opportunity, but a lot of other names are being tossed around. The likes of Billy Joe Saunders, Demetrius Andrade, Sergiy Derevyanchenko, Gilberto Ramirez, Jaimie Munguia, and even Julio Cesar Chavez Jr have all been mentioned.
Let’s run through those really quickly: Saunders is injured and unlikely to be an option. Andrade and Derevyanchenko are risks without much name value on short notice and I consider them unlikely. Derevyanchenko would be satisfying an IBF mandatory, however. Gilberto Ramirez is calling GGG to come up to 168 and challenger for his belt. That isn’t happening. Jaimie Munguia is an entirely unknown Mexican prospect and Chavez Jr is basically a punchline at this point. Given that the better fighters probably wouldn’t help this fight sell any better, I do see why the Irishman is considered the most likely candidate on short notice.
As for how this fight sells, that is the second issue. Early reports are that this will stay on HBO pay-per-view. I imagine this is due to budgetary reasons for the network, but nothing has been confirmed. If it does stay on PPV, this fight is obviously going to bomb against any of those names above. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr is the only man with any drawing power up there and that is obviously a non-starter due to credibility issues. Given that commercially this fight is going to fail any way it is sliced, Spike O’Sullivan makes sense as a low risk option for the low reward potential being presented to Gennady Golovkin.
Finally, there is the Golden Boy card that was supposed to feature the replay of this fight on HBO the following Saturday. Early reports are indicating that the plan is to now transition that into a live doubleheader. Again, like with all of this, that situation remains fluid too.
I return now to the title of this piece. Are you ready for Spike O’Sullivan, HBO PPV headliner? It isn’t a given yet, but I’d give that outcome the best odds of all the possibilities going forward.
