“Fighting Words” — Golovkin: Pressure on Canelo, Cotto

by David P. Greisman

The person who most wants to face Gennady Golovkin is the man who just got done being punched for seven and a half rounds by the heaviest hands in the middleweight division.

David Lemieux wanted more. He wanted more just minutes after the referee stepped in to end what was becoming an increasingly one-sided beating. And he wants another shot at Golovkin even though he’s already taken 280 shots from him.

“I could’ve continued. I’m very disappointed the referee stopped it. I could’ve continued,” Lemieux said, speaking truthfully yet bravely, given that he’d been outboxed in the beginning and outclassed until the end, that Golovkin had knocked him down with a left hook to the body in the fifth and hurt him with the same shot in the same spot in the eighth, and that little of what Lemieux threw himself had landed and what little of it did had little effect.

“I’ll meet him in the near future,” Lemieux said. “I want things to be settled in the near future.”

Lemieux’s sentiments weren’t just sentimental, but understandable. He’d been counted out before after losing twice in 2011, stopped in seven rounds by Marco Antonio Rubio and short on the scorecards against Joachim Alcine. He’d fought his way back into consideration, then into contention. He’d only just won a world title, and now less than four months later it was gone. He’d won nine fights in a row in the span of three years to get into the biggest fight of his career. After one night, after barely half an hour, he faced being forced to get back in line.

This biggest fight of Lemieux’s career meant facing Golovkin on pay-per-view in the United States in front of an announced sellout crowd of 20,548 people at the storied boxing venue of Madison Square Garden in New York City. Lemieux could’ve chosen otherwise. He could’ve remained in his native Montreal, continued to cultivate a faithful following among the highly supportive fight fans in Quebec, defended his title against other opponents and made millions in the process.

Some would say he made the right choice nevertheless by taking on the toughest challenge in the middleweight division instead of taking an easier route. Those very same people would note that Lemieux did what no other titleholder at 160 had done before.

The knock on Golovkin has long been about the people he faced, but that was because of the people he hadn’t faced. When no other top middleweight was willing to step into the ring with him, that meant Golovkin could do no better in his division than former titleholder Daniel Geale and two-time title challenger Martin Murray. Golovkin summarily dismissed each, then waited to see if anyone better would be next.

Lemieux was the first. Now we turn our attention to who will be second.

Everyone’s eyes will turn to Nov. 21, when Miguel Cotto and Canelo Alvarez will face each other on pay-per-view in Las Vegas for a fight that will technically be for the true middleweight championship if you go by lineage, though it’s difficult to see either man as being the true champion at 160 until the winner faces Golovkin.

Everyone’s attention, then, should also be on the post-fight interview that night at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino’s arena and on what is said and leaked in the days and weeks afterward. What’s said — and what goes unsaid — will help us gauge whether whatever interest there is in the winner taking on Golovkin is feigned or is for real.

Because even though Cotto is essentially a junior middleweight with the middleweight championship, and even though Alvarez has been fighting slightly above the 154-pound limit since 2014, Golovkin is hoping that one of these two smaller men will turn out to be bigger men than much of the rest at 160 have been.

It’s certain that Cotto and Canelo have thought about Golovkin already. They’ve been asked about a fight with “GGG” repeatedly.

Cotto has sounded noncommittal, while his trainer, Freddie Roach, has boldly stated that his fighter would win. Cotto holds the World Boxing Council’s world title, while Golovkin has been in the rare position of having another sanctioning body’s belt — now two of them — while also being ranked by the WBC as Cotto’s mandatory challenger. Cotto’s team had worked to ensure that their fighter would keep his title through the fight with Alvarez.

Cotto has a history of taking on tough opponents, though in recent years he’s seemed to speak more about the business side of the equation. Canelo, meanwhile, has sounded open to facing Golovkin, though he wants to wait until he feels he’s grown properly into the middleweight division.

They’re likely not thinking much about Golovkin at the moment. Their Nov. 21 fight is at the forefront and on the horizon. They may pay attention to the buy rate for the Golovkin-Lemieux pay-per-view when it’s announced and ponder how that may affect any negotiations to come. But their own show — and a win — must come first. 

Cotto and Canelo, like Lemieux, can make money without facing Golovkin. Cotto still draws loyal crowds in New York City, could always headline in his native Puerto Rico, or could return again to the Orlando area, another city with a sizable population of people of Puerto Rican heritage. Alvarez is a huge star in his native Mexico and has done great ticket sales in the United States, especially when he’s fought in Texas.

Neither needs to face Golovkin. The winner could remain at or somewhat around 154, although the pool of opposition there is limited given how many of the other top fighters are with boxing adviser Al Haymon. Alvarez is with Golden Boy Promotions, which had a significant falling out with Haymon. Cotto is with Roc Nation Sports, which is owned by rapper Jay-Z. Haymon is believed to have maneuvered last year to ensure that one of his fighters, middleweight Peter Quillin, wouldn’t appear on a Roc Nation card.

The winner also could choose to fight at middleweight but give up the WBC title. Again, two of the other top 160-pounders — Daniel Jacobs and Peter Quillin — are with Haymon. Jacobs and Quillin will fight Dec. 5. Beyond them and Andy Lee, there’s a significant drop-off in name recognition and accomplishment.

(There’s also the matter of Golovkin and Tureano Johnson, who won on the pay-per-view undercard this past Saturday to become the mandatory challenger to the belt Golovkin won from Lemieux. If Golovkin wants to unify all the titles at 160, then he may need to seek an exemption from the International Boxing Federation in order to face the Cotto-Canelo winner first.)

But any such decision from Cotto or Canelo would be seen as acceptance of — or perhaps acquiescence to — Golovkin being a better fighter and too dangerous a foe. If the lineal middleweight champion won’t fight the top middleweight challenger available, then he’s not truly a champion.

The pressure will be on Cotto or Canelo, then. The winner should want to face Golovkin at least as much as the man who just lost to him.

1.  It’s normal for HBO and Showtime to re-air their pay-per-view main events on their flagship networks one week later. It’s not always the case that they’ll also show something from the undercard. It’s good when they do.

Last month, Showtime put on both the Floyd Mayweather-Andre Berto fight one week later and the rematch between Orlando Salido and Roman Martinez from the pay-per-view undercard.

And this coming Saturday, HBO will put on both Gennady Golovkin’s win over David Lemieux and, from the undercard, Roman Gonzalez’s sensational win over Brian Viloria.

That’s wise, given that HBO is finally (and thankfully) trying to push Gonzalez for an audience that is only now beginning to get a glimpse of one of the best boxers in the world.

Gonzalez fought Edgar Sosa on HBO underneath Golovkin vs. Willie Monroe this past May. That undercard bout averaged 961,000 viewers and peaked at 1.018 million, according to Nielsen’s ratings estimates.

But Golovkin-Lemieux presumably played in front of a smaller audience. It was Golovkin’s first time on a pay-per-view, and the show wasn’t expected to do huge numbers.

So it’s good for both Golovkin — and Gonzalez, especially — that there’s this replay one week later. Golovkin is already becoming a star in the United States. Gonzalez isn’t there yet, but having his excellent win over Viloria seen in greater numbers should hopefully help.

2.  There was a lot of boxing last week. In the United States alone, there were four televised “Premier Boxing Champions” broadcasts, plus Top Rank’s Friday card on TruTV featuring Seanie Monaghan vs. Donovan George, plus the Gennady Golovkin-David Lemieux pay-per-view, never mind the non-televised shows taking place in America featuring 108-pound champion Donnie Nietes on one and former 154-pound titleholder Demetrius Andrade on another.

If you didn’t catch them all, then at least be sure you watch the main event of this past Friday’s PBC show, on which light heavyweights Andrzej Fonfara and Nathan Cleverly went to war. The undercard also featured a 115-pound title scrap between Kohei Kono and Koki Kameda.

According to CompuBox’s ringside statisticians, Fonfara and Cleverly threw a combined 2,524 punches over the span of 12 rounds and landed a combined 936.

There are 2,160 seconds of boxing in a 12-round fight. That means Fonfara-Cleverly averaged one punch thrown every 0.86 seconds, with one punch landed every 2.3 seconds.

While the biggest upset last week may have been Aron Martinez’s decision win over Devon Alexander, the second biggest upset is that somehow there were no knockdowns during Fonfara-Cleverly despite all that offense.

3.  We love this sport for the action and drama it can provide. We love battles like Fonfara-Cleverly, and we enjoy seeing fighters with potent and punishing offense like what Gennady Golovkin did to David Lemieux and what Roman Gonzalez did to Brian Viloria.

But we also know that this is a hurt sport, and the undercard to Saturday afternoon’s Premier Boxing Champions show brought one such sobering reality. Welterweight prospect Prichard Colon was critically hurt during the bout — whether it was by one of the several shots he took behind the head, by any or many of the legal blows he took, by his head whipping into the bottom rope during a knockdown, or by any combination of the above. He was taken to the hospital after vomiting and passing out in his dressing room afterward, and he underwent surgery for a brain injury and to relieve pressure on his brain to hopefully help him recover.

There are too many injuries and deaths each year. Any is too many, of course. HBO’s pay-per-view referenced the continued struggles of heavyweight Magomed Abdusalamov nearly two years after he nearly died from injuries suffered in his fight with Mike Perez. Junior lightweight Davey Browne Jr. died in September. So did a lightweight named Mzwanele Kompolo.

Colon’s case hits a little closer for me because I, like many other reporters, had interacted with and interviewed him multiple times while covering cards on which he appeared. His career is over, but that matters far, far less than just hoping he recovers and can live a productive life.

4.   And it’s through that lens that I look back at the referee stoppages during Golovkin-Lemieux and Gonzalez-Viloria. Neither stoppage came during what I would consider to be moments that a fighter was defenseless and in imminent danger of being badly hurt. But each stoppage came when the losing fighter was being beaten up and had little chance of winning.

Yes, Viloria had hurt Gonzalez with a body shot earlier in the ninth before Gonzalez retaliated with the barrage that brought the fight to an end. And yes, Lemieux has the kind of power that could change things at any time.

But there are slaughter rules in youth baseball for a reason. Boxing does have come-from-behind endings like we saw when John Molina beat Mickey Bey, Curtis Stevens beat Tureano Johnson, and Arturo Gatti beat Wilson Rodriguez and Gabe Ruelas. Those events are rare, and those circumstances were different.

The Golovkin-Lemieux and Gonzalez-Viloria stoppages weren’t ideal. They could’ve and perhaps should’ve come later. In general, I’ll still want referees to wait at least a little longer. But I understand the mercy the referees felt in stepping in a bit earlier than many of us prefer seeing.

5.  It’s a bad enough joke that the World Boxing Association has “super champions” and regular titleholders in several of its divisions. It’s even worse when it has super titleholders, regular titleholders and interim titleholders, all at the same time.

Wladimir Klitschko, who has unified three major sanctioning bodies’ world titles, is the WBA’s “super” titleholder at heavyweight. Ruslan Chagaev is the “regular” titleholder. And Luis Ortiz, who needed barely more than six minutes to dispatch Matias Vidondo on the undercard of the Gennady Golovkin-David Lemieux pay-per-view, is now the “interim” titleholder.

It’s even more of a joke that Ortiz was allowed to fight for this interim title for a second time. Thirteen months ago he won it by stopping Lateef Kayode in one round, only to have that result overturned when Ortiz tested positive for a banned steroid.

Ortiz clearly is good, and it’ll be interesting to see how he fares against other top heavyweights. He won’t be in line for a shot at Klitschko anytime soon, not unless Klitschko chooses to fight him. That’s because Ortiz, as interim titleholder, would be in line to face whoever holds the regular title, not whoever is the super titleholder.

Of course, the regular titleholder is supposed to be in line to face the super titleholder.

Then again, Chagaev already has a challenger he’s contractually obligated to face — Fres Oquendo, who Chagaev beat for the vacant belt in July 2014. Their rematch was supposed to be this past weekend, but Oquendo had to pull out with an injury.

Chagaev also supposedly has a mandatory challenger in Lucas Browne. Yet the WBA’s rankings for some reason don’t seem to jibe with all of those reports. Its No. 1 slot reads “Official Challenger Vacant.”

Sigh.

6.  As bad a joke as that is, far worse is what the WBA has done at middleweight.

The “super” champ is Gennady Golovkin, who had that status even before he unified his belt with David Lemieux’s this past Saturday. That’s because Golovkin had made at least five successful defenses.

The “regular” champ is Daniel Jacobs.

The “interim” champ is Chris Eubank Jr — though not for much longer.

Eubank got that belt when he stopped Fedor Chudinov in late February.

WBA rules require that interim titleholders defend every six months. And so even though Eubank will face Tony Jeter on Oct. 24 — about eight months since his last fight — he will be stripped of his belt for inactivity if he wins.

Yet somehow Jeter would also be stripped of that belt if he came out victorious. The new interim titleholder no matter what will be Alfonso Blanco, who defeated Sergey Khomitsky on Oct. 10. Yet Khomitsky won’t become interim titleholder until Oct. 25, according to WBA spokeswoman Hilmar Rojas.

What a mess. And it’s disgustingly, blatantly extracting a 3 percent sanctioning fee twice for the same belt in the same month from two different fights. I hope neither Eubank nor Jeter pay.

7.  It’s a racket — a horrible racket for taking money from fighters or from their teams.

The WBA requires interim titleholders to defend every six months and its other titleholders to defend every nine months. The only time that’s different is if a titleholder had picked up a vacant belt. In those cases, he has 120 days to make his first defense if he’s not a heavyweight, and 180 days to make his first defense if he is.

Of course, a fighter can have those defense periods extended. Sometimes the WBA can do that of its own volition. Sometimes the WBA will require a fighter to apply for a “special permit,” which can cost anywhere from $12,000 to $25,000. That fee is paid even if the request for a permit isn’t approved.

Sadly, we shouldn’t expect any less — or rather any more — from a sanctioning body that now has 44 titleholders in its 17 divisions. There are 11 “super” titleholders or variations on that theme; 17 “regular” titleholders, and 16 “interim” titleholders.

Sadly, we also shouldn’t any less, or rather any more, from the same sanctioning body that screwed over Jose Benavidez Jr. in order to install Adrien Broner as its “regular” titleholder at 140, and who screwed over Jesus Cuellar in order to make Leo Santa Cruz its “super” titleholder at 126.

8.  There are so many title belts that it wouldn’t be a surprise if the Oct. 30 bout between heavyweights Malik Scott and Tony Thompson were for one.

It’s not, of course. But the press release sent out earlier this month announcing the fight had a graphic featuring Scott and Thompson, and below their names on the graphic were the words “World Heavyweight Championship.”

Somebody screwed up. It happens. Properly, none of the other material on the Premier Boxing Champions website refers to Scott-Thompson as being for a title.

9.  My day job these days has me working as a publicist for a nonprofit. In this role, I sometimes write press releases and letters quoting other people in my organization, and on occasion these quotes include words that were never actually said out loud or typed on screen by that person. Of course, that person does have to approve of the quotes and essentially blesses them as being their own words.

I note this because one of my favorite amusements in boxing is seeing the hilariously fake yet highly creative quotes written on rare occasions in some of veteran publicist Fred Sternburg’s news releases — and then seeing which media outlets pick them up as if they are real.

Last week brought a couple of gems promoting Top Rank’s card this past Friday featuring a light heavyweight bout between Seanie Monaghan and Donovan George.

One release had the fighters wearing baseball jerseys and making puns based on the sport.

“I can tell you now that on Friday night, in Brooklyn, my fists be playing T-Ball with Donovan George’s head. Some lucky fan in the cheap seats may catch it,” Sternburg had Monaghan saying.

“I'm looking to mow down the heart of the batting order of Top Rank's stable, beginning with ‘Irish Stew’ Seanie Monaghan, followed by Jesse ‘Out of Work’ Hart and Gilberto ‘Zero” Ramirez,” Sternburg had George saying. “I can't wait to personally welcome that bush leaguer Monaghan to the majors with my heater.  Only what I throw will be more than just a brush back.”

One notable boxing site ran these quotes within a story. Another notable news site did the same with a couple of Sternburg quotes from a different release:

“I want to wipe out Top Rank's stable. It starts Friday with ‘Irish Stew’ Seanie Monaghan, the easiest fight of the three Top Rank fighters I'm declaring war on” Sternburg had George saying. “Then I want to get my hands on Jesse ‘Out of Work’ Hart. I want to shut his trap. Philadelphia hasn't been a fight town in decades and Hart is softer than a tub of Philadelphia cream cheese. Finally, I want Top Rank’s Mexican darling Gilberto ‘Zero’ Ramirez — a fighter who lives up to his ring name."

“I know the Cubs have been suffering from the Curse of the Billy Goat but I didn’t know the goat could talk until I heard Donovan George’s comments today," Sternburg had Monaghan saying. “Poor Donovan is in for a shock on Friday night.  It's fitting that his professional demise will be in Brooklyn because ‘Da Bomb’ will leave as ‘Da Bum’ after I knock him out. The only thing Donovan will be wiping out are the cobwebs I put in his head.”

Of course, this very website on which you’re reading this column still posts press releases without clearly identifying them as being press releases — including both of these from Sternburg. We may be above mockery in this case, but we’re not above criticism.

10.  With all that said, I do miss Sternburg’s releases that used to be timed with Groundhog Day and Columbus Day. Last week brought the fifth straight year without Sternburg’s glorious Columbus Day creation.

2008, words ascribed to Kelly Pavlik’s trainer, Jack Loew, ahead of Pavlik’s fight with Bernard Hopkins: “Bernard is going to discover on October 18 that his new world really is flat ... flat on his back. Kelly has had his best training camp ever and he is ready to shiver Hopkins’ timbers from stem to stern.”

2009, words ascribed to Andre Dirrell ahead of his fight with Carl Froch: “Froch is going to discover on October 17 that his new world really is flat ... flat on his back. I'm going to expose him like a ‘Page 3’ pinup in The Sun. I’ve had my best training camp ever and I'm ready to shiver Froch’s timbers from stem to stern.”

2010, words ascribed to Loew again ahead of Pavlik’s later-canceled fight with Bryan Vera: “Brian Vera is going to discover on November 13 that his new world really is flat ... flat on his back. Kelly entered this training camp in superb condition, weighing less than 170 pounds. After hearing what Vera has already been saying about us, he should consider wearing a life vest into the ring because Kelly is taking him into deep water on November 13.”

Meanwhile, Punxsutawney Phil through Sternburg predicted Jeff Lacy would beat Joe Calzaghe, Vic Darchinyan would beat Jorge Arce, Manny Pacquiao would beat Joshua Clottey, Miguel Cotto would beat Ricardo Mayorga, Nonito Donaire would beat Wilfredo Vazquez Jr. and be a titleholder for six more years, the Brandon Rios-Mike Alvarado rematch would be a Fight of the Year candidate, and Manny Pacquiao would win his rematch with Timothy Bradley.

But the groundhog was not heard from in 2015.

That’s a shame. The furry little guy has a better record on predictions than another furry little guy:

Me…

“Fighting Words” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at

or internationally at

. Send questions/comments via email at