THE World Boxing Association declined Daniel Jacobs’ request to amend the purse split for his possible world title fight with WBA Super World middleweight champion, Gennady Golovkin. The sanctioning body’s World Championships Committee held a vote this week and upheld the original 75-25 split in favor of the champion, Golovkin.
While the WBA has yet to order a purse bid for the title bout, Team Jacobs preemptively appealed the original allocation last month, which favored ‘GGG’ three to one. The Brooklyn-based challenger proposed a 60-40 split instead.
Negotiations for the possible late-fall clash between the world’s top two 160-pounders are ongoing. However, the deadline to get the fight made is fast approaching. A ten day grace period added to the October 12th deadline means that the parties have until October 22nd to come to an agreement or the fight will go to purse bid
A statement on the WBA’s official website summarized the reasoning behind the purse-split ruling:
“Golovkin is currently regarded at one of the greatest pound-for-pound fighters fighting today. His long association with WBA was also taken into consideration.
“Triple G” won the WBA World middleweight title in 2010 when he knocked out WBA Fedelatin middleweight champion Nelson Julio Tapia in the third round of a scheduled 12-round fight. After his 10th defense of the WBA World middleweight title, a third round TKO over WBA Super World and IBF World middleweight champion Daniel Geale, Golovkin was elevated to Super Champion.
In addition, Golovkin’s record of 36-0 with 33 of those wins coming by way of knockout, as well as having had 16 successful defenses since 2013, establishes “Triple G” as one of the brightest stars in boxing’s firmament.
Jacobs also has an excellent record of 32-1 with 29 KOs, but he has only held the title for two years with four defenses to his credit.
But Jacobs, like Golovkin, is a prestige fighter, which makes this championship bout all the more tantalizing.
Under the circumstances, the WBA World Championships Committee has decided to maintain the original percentages for a possible purse bid between Golovkin and Jacobs.”
Both sides have been very vocal about wanting the fight and December 10th in New York City has already been earmarked for the event. That said, there are a lot of issues to address before ink lands on paper, with dollars and cents, undoubtedly, at the top of the list.
“We’ve always liked the fight and welcomed the fight,” said Tom Loeffler, Golovkin’s promoter, to RingTV.com. “It’s just a matter of trying to come to an agreement to make the fight happen. Every sense that I have is that Danny wants the fight. And if you want to show that you’re the best — you have to fight the best. It’s a huge opportunity for Danny.”
Aside from the purse split, the issue of networks may also complicate matters. Stateside, Golovkin competes exclusively on HBO. On the other side of the negotiating table, Al Haymon, who advises Jacobs, has a strained relationship with HBO but a cozy one with their main rival, Showtime.
If the fight were to go to purse bid, the winning party will aggressively push to stage the fight in their network of choice, in similar fashion to what would have resulted from last year’s Sergey Kovalev – Adonis Stevenson WBC bid order.
Most know how that turned out but in case you don’t, it didn’t. Main Events pulled out of the bid, presumably, because a winning bid by Haymon would have resulted in Kovalev having to break his contract with HBO in order to pursue the WBC belt against Stevenson on Showtime.
Loffler is hopeful that a common ground can be reached before it gets anywhere near that point. “It’s much more beneficial to work out a deal rather than let it go to a purse bid,” he continued. “So we’ll cross that bridge if we get to it in the purse bid situation.”
