If the greatest impact on the Canelo Alvarez-Gennady Golovkin pay-per-view sales on HBO is the dollars used up by the Aug. 26 Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Conor McGregor fight, another significant blow will be the decision to keep reporters out of training camps in August.
By being restricted to comments emailed out by Golovkin?s side and an Aug. 28 media day at L.A. Live, the fighters sacrificed the type of one-on-one access that produces the best type of profile stories that complement a big fight.
Alvarez promoter Oscar De La Hoya said he closed camps before some of his major bouts as a way to improve concentration on the task at hand, and because Golovkin carried a 23-fight knockout streak into his bout in March, the opposition is too fierce to lose focus.
Golovkin said he, too, wanted to eliminate the media distractions that compromise his daily two-hour sessions in the gym, which were enhanced by runs and conditioning in Big Bear.
?This is the biggest fight for us,? Golovkin said Sunday in a promotional appearance for the bout while at Dodger Stadium, where he threw out the ceremonial first pitch.
?Everybody?s been coming during training time ? ?I just need two to three hours,? ? I can?t please everybody who asks me. I give my interviews before training [camp] and after training. Give me just those two hours every day because this fight is difficult.?
Eric Gomez, the president of Golden Boy Promotions, said Alvarez made a conscious decision to concentrate on training even if it did cost him pay-per-view buys by engaging in fewer interviews.
Golovkin (37-0, 33 knockouts) said when it came to this fight, he decided legacy trumps some extra cash.
?Yes, absolutely, that?s what I was thinking about,? he said.
Even after the Mayweather-McGregor spectacle attracted at least the second-best pay-per-view audience of all time with more than 4 million buys, promoter Tom Loeffler said he expects Alvarez-Golovkin to produce at least 1 million buys, as Alvarez?s May victory by unanimous decision over Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. did.
Golovkin has yet to reach 200,000 buys in either of his two pay-per-views, against David Lemieux (in 2015) and Daniel Jacobs (in March).
?It?ll do as big as Canelo-Chavez and should do really well with the combination of the fan bases,? Loeffler said.
