My reaction to the verdict in the lawsuit between Golden Boy Promotions and Canelo Alvarez on one side and All-Star Boxing on the other is simple (and probably the same as yours):
Who cares?
In boxing, fights in the courtroom are nearly as common as they are in the ring, which is one of many reasons the sport?s popularity is rapidly plummeting.
There are far too many lawsuits in boxing.
There are far too few major fights.
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Canelo Alvarez, right, reacts after knocking down Amir Khan during their May 7 fight. (AP)
I don?t care about a lawsuit. I do care about Golden Boy head Oscar De La Hoya picking up the phone and calling Tom Loeffler of K2 Promotions to negotiate, seriously, a bout between Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin.
That?s what the fans, Golden Boy?s customers, care about. Regularly making the fights the fans want to see is what matters to customers, who are turning away from the sport in droves.
An examination of the Nielsen ratings for just about any boxing match on television shows a scary (but perhaps unsurprising) truth: Boxing fans are old. The largest segment of fans who watch boxing are 55 years old or greater. Young people have turned away from the sport for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the incessant courtroom battles.
All-Star Boxing?s Tutico Zabala is a Florida-based promoter who first brought Alvarez, now arguably the sport?s brightest star, to the U.S. Zabala contended that in 2008, he agreed to a four-year contract extension with Alvarez. He alleged that Golden Boy interfered with his contract and stole Alvarez away from him. He filed suit in 2011.
Following a three-week trial, the jury ruled on Monday against All-Star Boxing and in favor of Golden Boy. But the jury went against Alvarez, awarding All-Star $8.5 million for unjust enrichment.
In a statement, Golden Boy said, ?We are extremely pleased that not only did the jury find that no contract ever existed between Canelo and All-Star Boxing, but issued a judgment against All-Star boxing and ordered them to pay Golden Boy?s substantial legal fees.?
It vowed to appeal the verdict against Alvarez.
OK.
Now, about that fight between Alvarez and Golovkin.
Boxing is a cesspool in which the business deals are often so shady and conniving and underhanded as to make one physically ill. Rankings are routinely manipulated, contracts are routinely ignored and long-term relationships are severed in favor of the almighty dollar.
Someone who feels he or she has been wronged of course should go to court to pursue justice. But what does it say about this sport when courtrooms across this country, and around the world, are filled with lawsuits involving boxing in one way or another?
Boxing is the wild west of professional sports. There is no central governing authority to establish rules, settle disputes and ensure that the best fights get made.
Alvarez recently surrendered the WBC middleweight title, but remains the linear champion.
He got the opportunity to fight for the WBC belt (and the linear title by extension) in the first place, though, by agreeing that should he defeat then-WBC champion Miguel Cotto, he would defend it next against Golovkin. On the night of the news conference last year in Las Vegas after Alvarez defeated Cotto, it was patently clear that Golden Boy?s leadership had no intention of matching Alvarez with Golovkin next.
It eventually managed to extract another non-Golovkin fight from the WBC for Alvarez by agreeing that the winner of the Alvarez-Amir Khan fight would either fight Golovkin or be stripped of its belt.
Most fans don?t really care about the WBC belt. They are invested in the match, not the bauble. Loeffler and Golovkin are the only ones who seem to place great value in the titles.
After Alvarez predictably knocked out Khan, a significantly smaller man, he quickly surrendered the WBC belt and WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman awarded it to Golovkin.
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Gennady Golovkin now holds the IBF, WBA and WBC middleweight belts. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images) That satisfied Loeffler who, unable to land a big-name opponent for Golovkin, has adopted the strategy of trying to collect all four widely recognized middleweight title belts. That would be the WBA, the WBC, the WBO and the IBF titles.
Golovkin holds the IBF, WBC and WBA belts, though the WBA also recognizes Daniel Jacobs as a middleweight champion. It?s not worth explaining, other than that its policy of having a ?super? champion (Golovkin) and a ?regular? champion (Jacobs) only serves to confuse the fan base and turn it off from boxing even more.
Billy Joe Saunders holds the WBO belt and is a potential Golovkin opponent. If you asked yourself, ?Who?s he?? you?re not alone.
Golden Boy and K2 should be doing everything within their powers to get an Alvarez-Golovkin fight done as soon as possible.
Let?s be honest with ourselves, however: No one fight, no matter how excited the fan base may get about it, is going to break the sport out of this death spiral it?s trapped in.
The best must fight the best and it needs to happen repeatedly, over and over. Promoters too often protect their investment in a fighter by matching him lightly and waiting for a big fight could guarantee the largest possible payday. The way to ensure that large payday, though, is to always think of the best possible fights to make, and then to make them.
When the public knows it is going to regularly see the finest bouts, it will pay attention.
It?s why, even after six years of nauseating, complex and often downright offensive negotiations, the sporting world was so enthusiastic by the making of the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight in 2015. It pitted the two men widely assumed to be the best in world against each other. That promise led it to do record business.
Legal entanglements far too often prevent the best from fighting the best. While Golovkin could wind up fighting Jacobs, who is managed by Al Haymon, Alvarez cannot because Golden Boy is pursuing a federal antitrust lawsuit against Haymon, the founder of the Premier Boxing Champions.
There is little hope of this changing, frankly, because with no central authority to keep order, well, boys will be boys and try to get away with whatever they can.
The courts will continue to be involved and the winning promoters will continue to put out self-serving statements about their suits.
As for the public, well, it will turn its attention to sports where the winner is actually the winner, where the best will routinely meet the best, and where the judges are those in the striped shirts with a whistle and not the black robes and a gavel.
