This weekend just gone I caught up with K2 Promotions boss Tom Loeffler, who amid a busy weekend of promoting his fighters in Germany also gave me an update on world middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin’s options in the summer, should he come through his upcoming defense against Dominic Wade on April 23rd.
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Hopkins A Possibility For GGG But Unification Bouts Take Precedence
There had been reports circulating recently that the great Bernard Hopkins was looking at a potential showdown with Gennady Golovkin for his final fight, although no weight or catchweight had been mentioned for such a bout.
Touching on this, Tom said:
“We all have a lot of respect for Bernard in what he’s accomplished in boxing. He’s really a living legend. People forget that before that he lost to Kovalev he was really considered a light-heavyweight, he had won two titles in the light-heavyweight division.”
He added:
“If everything goes the right way in April, the priority would be against Canelo or a unification fight with Billy Joe (Saunders) or potentially a unification fight with Danny Jacobs or (Gilberto) Ramirez, but clearly if we couldn’t get one of those fights to happen, then Bernard would be one of the few guys who would be looking to fight Gennady – so I wouldn’t discount that if there wasn’t a bigger option available.”
GGG’s Growing Pay Per View Power and Mayweather Comparisons
We then talked about how some fans were quick to bring up comparison’s between Gennady’s recent pay per view performance in the States for his last fight in October to that of a certain Floyd Mayweather, who is known to have shattered all pay per view records in the sport of boxing.
Tom pointed out:
“What people forget with the Floyd comparison is that Floyd had his first pay per view against Arturo Gatti, he (already) had 18 appearances on HBO, he went to the Olympics for America and when he fought Gatti, Gatti was the bigger name. Gatti was the attraction – Floyd was the up and coming fighter.
He also noted that they were very pleased with the commercial performance of Golovkin’s fight at MSG with David Lemiux:
“When Gennady fought Lemieux, Gennady was clearly the bigger name and was carrying the pay per view even though it was a unification fight. Still he didn’t have that mainstream name like Arturo Gatti was when Floyd fought him. We look at that fight (Lemieux) as a very successful event from our perspective, Gennady was able to add the IBF title to his collection and sell out Madison Square Garden, and did some good ratings internationally on TV.”
The Golovkin Global Brand
As our conversation came towards an end, I also wanted to know how Tom felt about Gennady’s big endorsement that he landed last year with Apple for their new Apple Watch product last year, a feat not bestowed on many boxers, and how it was a testament to Golovkin’s growing world star power and indicative of his likability and role model status.
Tom replied:
“The global brands and blue chip companies see Gennady as someone who would be a great representative of their product and their company. Gennady is an ambassador for the sport of boxing and I think they look at it as anything Gennady is associated with brings the international recognition to a different level.”
He concluded:
“Certainly having one of the leading global brands like Apple choose Gennady for the Apple Watch was a big honour, but I think you are going to a see a lot more global companies associating themselves with Gennady and he’s the perfect spokesman for an endorsement like that.”
WBA Super, IBF, WBC interim and IBO world 160lbs champion Gennady Golovkin (34-031KO) returns to action on April 23rd against Dominic Wade at the Forum in Inglewood, California.
(Image source and credit: Fightsaga.com)
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