When Mexican superstar Canelo Alvarez twice tested positive for clenbuterol in the lead up to what would have been his May 5th rematch with Gennady Golovkin, it looked like a minor complication. Instead, his withdrawal has tossed everything on its head. Less than a month from fight night it is now still unclear who GGG will fight, how it will be broadcast, or now if he will even be fighting at all.
Even when it became clear that the Nevada State Athletic Commission was not going to allow Canelo Alvarez to fight on May 5th and the Mexican star dropped out of the fight, Gennady Golovkin (37-0-1, 33 KOs) seemed to have every intention of continuing to fight on the date regardless. His team relatively quickly lined up an opponent in little known Mexican prospect Jaimie Mungia (28-0, 24 KOs) to fill in. The idea here was to preserve the Mexican audience for the Cinco de Mayo showdown. The unfortunate expectation was that HBO didn’t have the money to take the show off PPV, but a fight was still going to happen.
I have covered several Munguia fights in my weekly Under the Radar Fight Results series and he is one of my favorite prospects. I look forward to watching his fights more than most others. The problem here is that I do not enjoy watching him because he is a surefire blue chip prospect, but because of his somewhat ridiculous style. Munguia is very much in that Antonio Margarito and now Jarrett Hurd style of charging forward and getting hit to be hit with probably even worse defense and more power. The 21 year old Mexican has no defense and would likely be obliterated. Plus, he only moved up to junior middleweight from welterweight this year and has never fought at middleweight.
For those reasons, the NSAC quickly rejected Jaime Munguia as a potential fill in opponent. Other potential replacements included WBO titlist Billy Joe Saunders, Sergiy Derevyanchenko, Demetrius Andrade, and Gary “Spike” O’Sullivan. Saunders is by far the most appealing option, however, but he is injured and has a fight scheduled. Derevyanchenko and Andrade are really good fighters who bring no real addition fanbase to the event and are probably too big of a short notice risk without much reward. The Ukrainian is at least a mandatory challenger for GGG’s IBF belt and would satisfy that though. Spike O’Sullivan (27-2, 19 KOs) seemed to fit the bill, however. The Irish middleweight is coming off a big HBO win and seems to be a straight forward style and predictable win for Golovkin on what is now closing in on potentially only three weeks notice.
There is also the pay per view issue here too. Initially it was reported that the fight would have to stay on PPV, but we all know how badly that would bomb. While the hardcore fanbase has been long enamored with Gennady Golovkin, he has never matured into a fighter who produces huge money just by showing up. Without a compelling opponent, this fight would threaten to barely break 100,000 buys. His fully promoted fight with feared power puncher David Lemieux only did around 150k, for example. Thankfully, ESPN’s Dan Rafael has reported that HBO is trying to find the money to move the fight off PPV and onto its network with Spike O’Sullivan the targeted opponent.
That is great news, but it all may be for naught. The latest rumors dripping out of camp Golovkin and HBO is that the three belt middleweight unified titleholder may not fight on the date at all. There are two reasons for this. The first is the short notice nature of promoting the fight. While they smartly switched arenas and are now slated to use the smaller 9,000 seat StubHub Center, there is concern that they will not be able to sell it out on such short notice without an opponent this late in the game. The second concern is that of Sergiy Derevyanchenko (12-0, 10 KOs) and his IBF mandatory position. The Ukrainian would be challenger’s team have been pushing hard for the IBF to mandate Golovkin to defend against him now that the Canelo fight has fallen through. If that is the case, Gennady fighting Spike O’Sullivan on May 5th, regular HBO and StubHub Center or not, would cost him one of his three belts.
I would be shocked if Golovkin and his team took Derevyanchenko on short notice as that is clearly a low reward, high risk proposition. Whether or not he’d give up the belt to meet Canelo next in September if the Mexican’s inevitable suspension doesn’t end up preventing that is hard to say. Fighting Sergiy first would be risking the likely seven figure payday that he already lost once. Yet, Golovkin values the belts more than most and has long held the dream of completely unifying the division a la Bernard Hopkins. He is one fight with Billy Joe Saunders away from doing so too. Giving up one of the belts at 36 would very likely make that a dream GGG could never realize.
That is the current state of affairs almost three weeks away from what should have been the biggest fight of the year. Everything remains so far up in the air that I cannot really make an honest prediction about what is going to happen here. I can say with certainty that GGG and Canelo will fight on Mexican Independence Day weekend in September if Alvarez is allowed to fight then, but I cannot state with any certainty on what the NSAC is going to rule at their hearing on the 18th. Even if they do let him fight, I have no idea what will happen in the interim. The Big Drama Show rumbles on, though not in the way Golovkin intended it to.
