This guy is simply amazing! What power he has! Bet Mayweather will never fight him. Maybe Manny is game, Pacquio of course...lol
HBO are in the fortunate position of having both Gennady Golovkin and soaring boxer Sergey Kovalev under contract , they are both starting to light a fire in the public eye. Golovkin's fight Oct. 18th in Carson city is so completely sold out that they had to add extra bleacher seats to the floor:
Golovkin Sells out the StubHub Center – and Moreby Steve Kim | Oct 13, 2014
When it was announced that Gennady Golovkin was going to make his Southern California debut headlining at the StubHub Center on October 18 against Marco Antonio Rubio, there was a mixture of curiosity and skepticism. Yeah, “GGG” had developed into a bit of a draw on the East Coast (where he had just recently graduated into the big room of the Madison Square Garden) but how would that translate to the opposite side of the country?
Turns out quite well.
First, after a large majority of the regular seats went on sale, it was announced that “SRO” (standing room only) tickets would be released, a first ever for this venue. Then special bleacher seats were added. With those quickly gobbled up, more will go on sale this Tuesday. When it’s all said and done, this will be the highest attended boxing event ever at the tennis stadium of this storied venue, which has become a boxing Mecca. The numbers will surpass fights like Paul Williams-Antonio Margarito, Israel Vazquez-Rafael Marquez I and III, Shane Mosley-Ricardo Mayorga, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr-Bryan Vera I, Brandon Rios-Mike Alvarado I and Andre Ward-Arthur Abraham.
Tom Loeffler, the managing director of K2 Promotions, who decided to pull the trigger on this move out west, told UCNLive.com, “We figured with an opponent like Rubio, who’s the WBC interim [middleweight] champion, popular in the Mexican community, well-known opponent, a well-known boxer as far as having fought Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Kelly Pavlik, having a knockout over David Lemieux. There was a lot of demand to bring Gennady over here. A lot of fans wanted to see him live, so this was the perfect opportunity, the perfect timing, the perfect venue, outdoors in Los Angeles. It’s going to be a great setting and the response was fantastic.”
Most believed that if they drew in the vicinity of 6,000 patrons, the promotion dubbed “Mexican Style” would be considered a success. After all, Golovkin has never appeared in Southern California and Rubio isn’t exactly a marquee dance partner. “To be honest, I thought it would be full; I didn’t know it would sell out a month before the fight. So this will be by far, about a thousand people in attendance more than any other previous event at the StubHub Center,” noted Loeffler.
When it’s all said and done, this is about the fight; so why are such things as the amount of ticket sales important? Because guys like Golovkin are simply considered too much risk for too little reward and till they build their own market value, they will continually be shunned by the sport’s biggest names. With the way things are going now, should that rationale now be cast aside? Other than the quartet of Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao, Miguel Cotto and Saul Alvarez, who is a bigger draw in the States?
Loeffler states, “I think after the last fight, when you fight in the big arena at Madison Square Garden and you can fill it up basically on Gennady’s popularity, when you can do that and then you come to the other coast to Los Angeles and you can sell out an arena like StubHub, clearly, StubHub is not big enough for a fighter like Gennady, especially against somebody like Rubio. That excuse gets old. We have the full financial backing now of HBO. With the ticket sales, maybe that was applicable two years ago but right now, that’s not applicable.”
What was interesting was that prior to the Golovkin-Daniel Geale fight, there seemed to be a negative attitude that permeated throughout the industry toward this event, almost if some people wanted that promotion to fail for whatever reason. “Well, we felt some resistance just in terms of, ‘Here’s a guy; he’s just been fighting in America for two years; now he’s going to headline in Madison Square Garden in the big arena.’ And Geale was definitely a respectable opponent; he was a two-time champion, clearly the toughest fighter at that time that Gennady had faced. But we did see some resistance and we saw that Gennady has so much potential in the sport in bringing new fans to the sport and excitement and new energy to the sport that it’s a phenomenon we haven’t seen for a long time,” said Loeffler.
Loeffler then pointed out, “[Gennady] was the first fighter, I think, for eight years, Cotto was the only fighter to go in the big arena in Madison Square Garden. So he’s breaking a lot of new ground and we look for a lot of things coming up for him in the future.”
As he came to the States back in 2012, early on, Loeffler made the decision he wasn’t going to merely television-package his fighter and relegate him to Indian casinos. An example of this would be former middleweight champion Sergio Martinez, who, despite holding the crown, was dictated to by Miguel Cotto for their June match-up because after years of being the recognized ruler at 160, Martinez had never ascended beyond the Foxwoods or the Theater at Madison Square Garden. For all of his and Lou DiBella’s bellyaching, the reality is they really had no leverage in those negotiations versus Cotto.
Many can simply be “television packagers”; it’s much more difficult to be real promoters. Promoting means actually putting up a bit of your own money and having to take a risk.
“Anytime we fought on the East Coast in New York or wherever the fight would be, we’d always have a Los Angeles press conference. So we laid the foundation for [Golovkin] coming to California anyways,” said Loeffler, who’s pushed all the right buttons during this process. “But we would invest in his career. It was a long-term project with Gennady. It’s not a one-fight, two-fight, one-year, two-year project. We’re looking at him being the biggest superstar in boxing over the next year or two years and with that is a lot of investment. We had a lot of financial risk going into the big arena in Madison Square Garden. There’s a lot of costs in New York with the marketing and the hotel rooms and the transportation and everything like that.
“But the payoff is what you’re seeing now as far as the media buzz and the popularity and the name recognition that you get from fighting in New York, fighting in Los Angeles and that’s what we’re capitalizing on right now.”
The announced attendance for the Golovkin-Geale fight over the summer was 8,572 and this upcoming fight will do just north of that. Taking away the aforementioned foursome, who else can currently draw that well in both New York and Los Angeles against that caliber of foe? No disrespect to Geale or Rubio but neither are considered strong B-sides who bring their own fan-bases to the dance.
With both Mayweather and Pacquiao heading into the sunsets of their magnificent careers (and perhaps Cotto as well), boxing needs to replenish itself with stars who will carry the sport into the next era. “Canelo” is right in the thick of his prime. Terence Crawford is certainly a regional draw in Omaha. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. – even before his self-imposed exile – was playing to waning numbers. Adrien Broner, with his colorful personality, certainly has an appeal. But it’s clear; Golovkin is in the discussion.
He’s certainly come a long way from that guy who fought in front of a thousand or so fans at the Turning Stone Resort and Casino back on Labor Day weekend in 2012. This interview with Loeffler is being conducted at the offices of Mario Lopez (yes, the guy who once was A.C. Slater) as Golovkin dropped in to do a segment on his radio show. Later that day, he would go to ESPN 710 and sit in with Max Kellerman and Marcellus Wiley before making an appearance at the Los Angeles Kings season opener at the Staples Center.
Yeah, it’s work being a marquee attraction.
Loeffler explained, “We want to build him outside of boxing, outside of the sports world. We’re bridging the gap with the entertainment world. He went to the HBO party at the Golden Globes; he went to the HBO party at the Emmys. He went to the ESPY awards and so we’ve really done a lot of work and investing a lot of time and energy in really building his brand. Not only here in the United States but also internationally. He’s invited a week after his fight as the guest of honor back to Monte Carlo to be there and then he’s going to be in Kazakhstan after that. So he’s building his global brand and we’re capitalizing on that.”
Saturday night should be a raucous night at 18400 S. Avalon Blvd. in Carson. But the most important question is: Will they have enough beer in the building? Trust me; I’ve seen it when they have run out and things got a bit ugly.
After laughing loudly at the thought, Loeffler says, “They have said that they’re going to staff to their full capacity for the concessions, so hopefully there won’t be any thirsty fans.”
THAWING?
Bob Arum told me on Friday afternoon that a junior welterweight battle between contender Mauricio Herrera and prospect/suspect Jose Benavidez has been added to the December 13 HBO broadcast headlined by Tim Bradley versus Diego Chaves. Herrera is represented by Golden Boy Promotions and Benavidez is with Top Rank Promotions. So as promised, the two sides are starting to make some fights. Let’s hope in 2015, we get some of the more prime stuff, say, Bradley against a Marcos Maidana or Lucas Matthysse.
The veteran promoter added that he’s talking to the network about adding the bout between Matt Korobov and Andy Lee for the vacant WBO middleweight crown to the broadcast.
Bradley-Chaves is slated for the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas and the word is Showtime/Al Haymon are planning a card on that very same date in the very same city at the Mandalay Bay that could see Demetrius Andrade defend his WBO 154-pound belt against Jermell Charlo among other fights.
So yeah, while one “Cold War” thaws, the other is alive and well.
FINAL FLURRIES
Silly me, when the WBC announced on Saturday that an “agreement” had been reached between its 140-pound beltholder, Danny Garcia and Viktor Postol, I thought it was for a fight, not a step-aside fee. Oh, will I ever learn?!…Cornelius Bundrage defeated Carlos Molina in Cancun on Saturday night for the IBF junior middleweight crown in as ugly a fight as you believed it would be…Are the two best college football teams from the state of Mississippi? I believe so…‘Bama has been very underwhelming this season…UCLA has been a huge disappointment this season. There’s no other way to put it…Here’s my weekly in-season blog for CanesInsight.com on the Canes victory over Cincy: CanesInSight – K9Cane’s Korner – A Banner Day at Sun Life Stadium…I can be reached at steve.kim@ucnlive.com and I tweet (a lot) at
twitter.com/steveucnlive. I also share photos of stuff at
instagram.com/steveucnlive.
Tags: Andy Lee, Bob Arum, California, Carson, Demetrius Andrade, Diego Chaves, Gennady Golovkin, Golden Boy Promotions, Golovkin-Rubio, Jermell Charlo, Jose Benavidez, K2 Promotions, Marco Antonio Rubio, Matt Korobov, Mauricio Herrera, Mexican Style, sold out, steve kim, StubHub Center, Tim Bradley, Tom Loeffler, Top Rank Promotions, WBA middleweight title, WBC interim middleweight title
