Alvarez has now moved from having three of the four major titles this summer (WBA, WBC, and IBF) to holding only one of their legitimate championships (WBA), since the ridiculous Oscar De La Hoya stamp of approval for the WBC to give Alvarez their even more ridiculous "Franchise" title that does not have any mandatory contenders and cannot be lost, even if Alvarez loses in the ring.
There will be lots of blame to pass around and I'll be doing so shortly, but the biggest worry of all is when you read between the lines of Oscar De La Hoya's whining press release, where De La Hoya vaguely threatens to have his fighters refuse to fight for any of the IBF championships.
If you combine De La Hoya/Golden Boy's possible refusal to fight for IBF title, the PBC seemingly on their way to refusing to recognize the WBO ( It took me many years to reluctantly do that), the road to making big fights between rival promoters could be hitting a major roadblock shortly.
Think about it this way, what is the main carrot that makes big fights?
It's not money, top fighters get that with in-house title defenses and are often willing to wait for big dollars which often come with larger risk.
It's often not public demand either, as the wait for Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao showed with both fighters not facing off in their prime,
It is often championships-one fighter against the other for who is truly the best (the dollars for such a fight doesn't hurt either) and we are entering a space that may begin to erode even that as an incentive.
When promoters can begin to brush off a fighter by not recognizing the title he holds, the argument for needing to decide the "true world champion" can be brushed aside easily.
"Why should I fight him to decide, I hold the "real" title, he doesn't hold one that I deem important", therefore rendering the need to unify and the excuse to avoid an anticipated fight is easy to find.
I'm not always a fan of sanctioning bodies, more often than not, they sway between ignorant and corrupt with a large dose of ridiculous tossed in for taste, but fighters need to fight for something.
If there were no titles, no trophies in team sports, what would they play for and more importantly why would they or we care about their games?
Anyone can watch a local pickup game anywhere, so why play if nothing is on the line?
A fight is just a fight after all, why pay to watch someone fight someone else without anything on the line?
Could there be a better sanctioning body?
The WBA has too many title belts, the WBC creates special titles with special privileges for fighters they like, the WBO rates Top Rank fighters far earlier and higher than they should and the IBF ratings are often bad as they attempt to be fair worldwide, they overrate fighters unproven against world-class opponents.
However, for now, we have little choice other than to try to encourage them to correct these errors as any new body would just be another belt unless all the promoters agreed to make them that title the elite championship and make sure they support it- And that just isn't happening.
For all the issues with the alphabet boys, the IBF is the one that is the fairest.
They at least follow their rules, which is more than I can say for the others, and for all their problems with ratings and often weak mandatory contenders, they have a program plotted out on how things are done and for the problems that come with that, they follow their standards.
And that leads us back to Mr. Alvarez and his promoter Mr.De La Hoya.
Mr.Alvarez, who in the eyes of the majority of boxing followers is at best 0-1-1 vs Gennady Golovkin and many (myself included) have him losing both fights, has decided to rest on his dubious win/draw and avoid a Golovkin rematch, which is not only the biggest fight that Alvarez can find, it's the main reason that DAZN doled out so many dollars to sign him to the largest contract in sports.
Team Canelo dodged Golovkin, to begin with by fighting the likes of Amir Khan, Liam Smith, and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, all while "encouraging" Golovkin to fight less so an injury wouldn't delay a potential fight.
While that was on Golovkin, what wasn't was after a draw that almost everyone thought he lost, was the "tainted beef" excuse for Alvarez's failing a PED test and then after winning a controversial decision in the second fight (The second fight was far closer than the first to be fair), to strut around as "champion" and attempt to make Golovkin jump through hoops such as "win a belt" to order to "give the people the fights they want", which is a De La Hoya fallback mantra used often.
The Alvarez management wanted so badly to avoid Golovkin they even gave up their treasured September date for 2019 because they couldn't find anyone that DAZN would approve of other than Golovkin or WBO champion Demetrius Andrade, who is tremendously talented, if not exciting and would be a real threat to decision either Alvarez or Golovkin.
Don't forget the speed that GBP/Canelo accepted the WBC's ridiculous "franchise" title, even if it cost him their real title with as that title won't force Alvarez to fight anyone including their then-minor champion Jermall Charlo.
All of this to fight who they wish without responsibility for quality opponents.
I'm not going to hammer Alvarez too much for his battle with the IBF over not fighting Sergey Dereyvanchenko, who is a top ten contender, but since his close split decision loss to Daniel Jacobs for the same IBF title stripped from Gennady Golovkin, has fought only one time, a unanimous decision over Jack Culcay and likely shouldn't be the mandatory challenger for Alvarez, although he is a far better fighter than De La Hoya claimed in his whiny statement.
Canelo's team did try to fight Dereyvanchenko, mainly because it would have been yet another reason to sidestep GGG, even taking less money from DAZN to have them sign off on this fight if it didn't have the clause that they must face Golovkin next and Derevyvanchenko promoter Lou DiBella with "advisor" Al Haymon did pull this same stunt with Golovkin, which is negotiating but delay a deal in order to hope the bigger draw isn't satisfied and vacates/strips the title, which their fighter then fights for.
The IBF could have seen that Alvarez was negotiating in good faith and given them a small time extension to attempt to get the fight signed and that was a mistake on their part, especially when you consider the history of DiBella/Haymon in similar situations, but it's tough to feel too sorry for Canelo/GBP considering their history of machinations.
So, where do we stand?
Dereyvanchenko will get his second chance to fight for the vacant IBF title, but he likely won't like the opponent in the second-ranked Golovkin in what should be a strong action fight and one that might make Golovkin look very good.
Golovkin with a win can pick up a title, which would take away another excuse from GBP for avoiding a third fight.
The IBF looks like an organization that might be too rigid for its own good, although I'll take that over the other three, who apply their rules on an "as needed" basis depending on the situation and who is involved.
Canelo Alvarez tried to do the right thing in fighting his mandatory, but after dodging Golovkin with more stipulations and ducks than in an episode of Duck Tales, it's tough to feel too sorry for him and who knows when he fights again and against who.
DAZN wants quality fights and I'm willing to bet that there are some questions inside the Canelo camp on whether they should have accepted going into business with an entity that wants to tell them who to fight and may have checkmated Oscar De La Hoya and his plans to keep Canelo active, but yet avoid the person that might have his number- no matter the scorecards of a few judges.
And for boxing, yet another loss for a sport that takes a step back with each step forward.
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