For Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin, the time is now
— -- On March 8, 1971, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier fought one of the all-time great fights in boxing history. The action was brutal enough, and the decision close enough, that a swift rematch might very well have exceeded the first one, in hype and revenue if not in artistry.
But a funny thing happened on the way to that rematch. Frazier decided to take a busman's holiday in Kingston, Jamaica, figuring to pocket an easy 800 grand against an unbeaten, raw kid named George Foreman.
Six knockdowns later, the dream of a great second Ali-Frazier bout was over. The two eventually fought that rematch in 1974, but by then they were diminished in both skill and drawing power. Ali-Frazier II was a stinker and the fighters settled for $1.25 million each, half of what they made in the first bout.
The fact that they staged a transcendent third bout in Manila a year later does not alter the fact that their saga should have been an unbroken trilogy, with both men at or near the peaks of their considerable talents.
It is a lesson that the men who control the destinies of middleweight unified titlist Gennady Golovkin and champion Canelo Alvarez might well take to heart. And it is not the only one.
Boxing history is replete with fights that shoulda, woulda, coulda been made, but somehow weren't, for various reasons.
In the 1920s, Harry Wills and Jack Dempsey never fought due to the fear of promoter Tex Rickard that a black/white matchup might cause the kind of racial disturbances that surrounded the Jack Johnson-Jim Jeffries fight 15 years earlier. The fact that Wills eventually went the distance with Luis Angel Firpo (a Dempsey KO victim in two ferocious rounds), lost to Jack Sharkey (another Dempsey KO victim) and was knocked out by Paulino Uzcudun (a Joe Louis victim) indicates Wills wouldn't have been much of a threat to Dempsey.
Still, it was a match the public wanted to see.
Likewise a rematch between Jake LaMotta and Marcel Cerdan, derailed by Cerdan's death in a plane crash; a professional match between amateur rivals Riddick Bowe and Lennox Lewis, derailed by the fears of Bowe's manager, Rock Newman; and a Mike Tyson-George Foreman fight, derailed by the very legitimate concern of Tyson's people that their man would get smoked.
A lot of us would have liked to see Sugar Ray Leonard fight Aaron Pryor, but that one went away when Leonard retired after being knocked down by Kevin Howard. By the time Leonard came back, Pryor had been knocked out by Bobby Joe Young, and the fight was toast.
And who doesn't fantasize about what a fight between Julio Cesar Chavez and Salvador Sanchez might have been like? That one, too, met with tragedy when Sanchez died in a car accident at age 23.
The point is, great fights have a limited window in which to be made, and that window can slam shut for a lot of different reasons. For GGG and Canelo, that window is wide open now. The question is, will they take advantage of it before it's too late?
Last week, Alvarez, fresh off an impressive KO of Amir Khan, vacated his WBC middleweight title, for which Golovkin is the mandatory challenger.
Considering that twice previously, Alvarez had asked for, and received, dispensation from WBC boss Mauricio Sulaiman to take a voluntary defense instead, paying Golovkin step-aside money both times, it was easy to surmise that this was another ruse in which to avoid facing a fighter who in his 35-0, 32-KO career has looked more like monster than man.
But there is another possibility at work here, that Alvarez's promoter, Golden Boy (Oscar De La Hoya, prop.) was simply looking to escape the constraints of going to a purse bid, which was mandated by Sulaiman if the two sides could not reach agreement within 15 days of the Khan fight.
The risk of going to a purse bid, of course, is that somebody with deep pockets (Al Haymon, anyone?) could swoop in and steal the rights with an outrageously high offer. De La Hoya is too smart to allow that to happen. Plus, there is the slight matter of the lawsuit by Felix "Tuto" Zabala, Alvarez's former manager, who claims Golden Boy Promotions stole Canelo out from under him.
According to people I have spoken to, any negotiations for a Canelo-GGG fight are on hold until after the case is completed, which could take anywhere from two weeks to a month.
One line of reasoning is that if Zabala wins a large financial judgment, which might even include a percentage of Alvarez's future earnings, it might force Golden Boy to make the GGG fight if only to recoup its losses.
In that case, it might serve boxing fans well to root hard for Zabala in this lawsuit.
But what fight fans are really rooting for is a resolution to this matter that ends with Alvarez and Golovkin meeting in a ring, and soon, without long delays and interim fights that could result in an act of fate like those listed above.
Tom Loeffler, Golovkin's manager, told me Wednesday that he has had no indication from Golden Boy of whether the fight will happen, or whether it won't.
Either way, he says, his man will fight in September, and if it is not Alvarez, it could be one of the following: Billy Joe Saunders, an Englishman who holds the WBO title; Brooklyn's Danny Jacobs, who has the WBA "regular" title and could easily sell out Barclays Center fighting GGG; Chris Eubank Jr., who like Saunders, could be a big draw in the UK; or Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., in the midst of yet another career rehabilitation following his loss to Andrzej Fonfara.
"I can't put Gennady's career on hold waiting for an answer," Loeffler said, understandably. But boxing history tells us he might be putting it in jeopardy.
There really are few, if any, obstacles to making the fight. Right now, three sites are interested in hosting it: Las Vegas; AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas; and Madison Square Garden. As I reported two weeks ago, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones would like to put it in AT&T on Sept. 17, when his NFL team on the road. HBO pay-per-view would televise, having both fighters under contract, and Golovkin has said it would have to be at middleweight.
It's as close to plug-and-play as a big fight gets.
And if you think Canelo is afraid of GGG -- a vicious hitter who leaves his opponents never the same after fighting him -- think again. Any fighter who dared to challenge Floyd Mayweather at 23 is unlikely to know fear of another man with gloves on.
No, in this case, the fear is for promoters and managers who dread losing a meal ticket. Alvarez is really the only pay-per-view attraction Golden Boy has, unless De La Hoya decides to come out of retirement.
But De La Hoya knows that in boxing, one must strike while the iron is hot, and while both fighters are at the peak of both their games and their earning power.
For Alvarez and Golovkin, that time is now.
No sense in taking any more chances than boxing already entails.
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