Oscar De La Hoya, the CEO of Golden Boy Promotions, has made it clear by his actions over the last few months that what he says and what he does are two separate and distinct things.
Listen to him speak and you?ll leave the room convinced he?s going to put together a card filled with matches that would make Hagler-Hearns and Ali-Frazier III look tame by comparison.
You?ll think he?s ready to match Canelo Alvarez with Godzilla, not just Gennady Golovkin.
Follow through, however, appears to be a problem for the Golden Boy, who seems to have gotten pretty good at the old bait-and-switch.
What he has done in these last 10 months is diminish Alvarez?s standing by doing a not-so-artful dodge around Golovkin.
Alvarez will fight Liam Smith on Sept. 17 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, in a fight that would not look good as an HBO card let alone as the headliner of a woefully lacking HBO Pay-Per-View show.
The venue was chosen in large part to obfuscate the fact that Alvarez had yet again ducked Golovkin after giving every indication he?d fight him.
Time will prove whether or not that worked, but fighting in a fancy NFL stadium doesn?t change the fact that De La Hoya promised one thing and delivered something entirely different.
After Alvarez authoritatively knocked out Amir Khan on May 7 in Las Vegas, a giddy De La Hoya took the stage at the post-fight news conference and began pretending that he was calling Tom Loeffler.
Loeffler runs K2, the company that promotes Golovkin. De La Hoya hammed it up, and said in his answers to every question that night that he planned to call Loeffler the following morning to begin the process of making the fight that many believe is the biggest that can be made in the sport now.
But less than two weeks after the fight, a bout in which Alvarez called Golovkin into the ring following his knockout of Khan, Alvarez released a statement in which he said he was vacating his WBC middleweight belt, which he?d won the previous November by outboxing Miguel Cotto.
De La Hoya promised before that fight that Alvarez would seek out Golovkin next, but at least at the post-fight news conference that night, De La Hoya backed off a bit.
The question, though, is whether De La Hoya?s strategy will work in the long-term.
Much of what?s next will depend upon how Alvarez comes out of his fight with Smith. Alvarez, who is an incredible 12-1 favorite, will fight on HBO in December should he not sustain any cuts or injuries in the Smith fight.
HBO Sports, which suddenly has become exceptionally frugal when it comes to spending money on boxing, isn?t likely to pay for the best opponent available for that show.
It?s going to mostly be an appearance fight, one that will be designed for Alvarez to win and look good and try to build to the fight everyone wants to see.
There are four top names in the division that Alvarez could face, but there are issues surrounding each of them. Alvarez has already faced Erislandy Lara, who doesn?t have a fight lined up and is eager for a big-name opponent.
It?s unlikely that Alvarez and De La Hoya would want to take that fight given that Alvarez has already beaten Lara and Lara is the kind of guy who is very difficult to look good against.
Jermall Charlo has a title defense against unbeaten Julian Williams (who himself wouldn?t be a bad opponent for Alvarez on HBO), and so he?s unavailable. Jermell Charlo, Jermall?s twin, is 28-0 and perhaps a possibility, though he?s with Haymon Boxing, whom De La Hoya is suing.
Would he face Austin Trout again? Unlikely. Vanes Martirosyan is available, but he?s been in several dreadful fights.
The point is, there are no fights which are really available at super welterweight, which Alvarez is saying is his weight class, that would be much of a showcase for him and which would interest the public.
He could move up to middleweight as a way of getting his feet wet at that weight and perhaps fight someone like Andy Lee, but doing that would seem to be an admission he was avoiding Golovkin.
De La Hoya is talking about record attendance and astronomical pay-per-view sales for the Alvarez-Smith fight. But it?s more likely to do in 300,000 range that Alvarez?s fights with Lara and Alfredo Angulo did.
And when the pay-per-view numbers dip, so does De La Hoya?s position that Alvarez is the top star in the sport.
