Talking Big Fights – The Talk ‘n’ Shoot Boxing Podcast is back with it’s edition #19, and as we head into September we spend some more time looking at the remaining big fights left on the boxing calendar for 2016.
The TnS Podcast starts off with a look at this weekend’s split broadcast card that sees Gennady Golovkin taking on Kell Brook in London and Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez taking on Carlos Cuadras in Los Angeles.
Golovkin is 35-0 with 32 knock outs and he has the attention of the world’s boxing audience as one of the hardest hitters in the world today. He is currently ranked in the top of most pound for pound lists, including being ranked #4 at the prestigious TBRB.org boxing rankings site. Few people are giving Brook a chance, as the Brit is jumping up two weight classes to challenge Golovkin. So it is not unexpected that Brook is coming in a copnsiderable underdog at the sports books.
But check out Brook’s numbers – his record is 36-0 with 25 KOs and he is the #1 ranked welterweight in the world today. He weighed in 176 lbs, 15 pounds heavier than the middleweight limit of 160 lbs, and that number was actually 7 pounds higher than Golovkin’s measured weight. Brook is now 30 yeas old, and he has had trouble with inactivity in recent years. After winning the world title, he was stabbed in the leg and clearly coudln’t do any road work for months. Weight balloons, and getting down to a certain number becomes more and more trying as time goes by. Brook was going to have to move up sooner or later anyway, and here he is doing it against the toughest of opponents on the biggest of stages.
Talking Big Fights Talk ‘n’ Shoot Boxing Podcast #19
The discussion is dominated by HBO boxing and their apparent strategy during the year of 2016. The Cable giant has been pairing Triple G Golovkin with “Chocolatito” Gonzalez for several events, event featuring the pairing on PPV last year in October. At some point in the coming year or so, look for HBO to put Golovkin and “Chocolatito” on pay-per-view again, but they are still looking for that perfect big money match-up. They have been investing for a long time.
HBO has a PPV scheduled the following weekend featuring Saul “Canelo” Alvarez taking on Liam Smith, so the Triple G and Chocolatito fights this weekend will probably look like a commercial for that fight, which is HBO’s penultimate PPV of the year.
The last HBO PPV in 2016 comes up on November 19th as the much talked about Sergey Kovalev vs Andre Ward light heavyweight showdown takes place. That fight also has seen HBO devote a good deal of time and resources to make the fight and the bottom line is that they have stayed the course through a lot of tests as they tried to make the fight happen. Now that it is upon us, what type of PPV numbers can HBO expect as a payoff?
Talking Big Fights Talk ‘n’ Shoot Boxing Podcast #19 / Check out more boxing news and features at The Sweet Science.
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