John Locher/Associated Press With Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin set for their highly anticipated rematch Saturday night, Golden Boy Promotions chairman Oscar De La Hoya recently revealed he was a target of death threats after the first showdown ended in a controversial draw. "You have no idea how many threats that I received because it was a draw," De La Hoya told TMZ Sports. "...People thought that I fixed it, as the promoter." It was the judges, not De La Hoya, who couldn't come to an agreement in September 2017. The scorecards read 115-113 Golovkin, 118-110 Alvarez and 114-114 draw. The lopsided scorecard in favor of Alvarez had Golovkin's trainer wondering what fight judge Adalaide Byrd was watching. "I think she turned in her scorecard before the fight started," Abel Sanchez said, per Lance Pugmire of the Los Angeles Times. Nevada Athletic Commission executive director Bob Bennett noted that Byrd needed "a small break" after that fight. "Like in any profession, you have a bad night," Bennett said. "Unfortunately, she didn't do well. I can tell you she conducts training for us, takes judges under her wing...but her score was too wide." Video Play Button Videos you might like As it turns out, De La Hoya received backlash as the result of Byrd's scoring. But as Alvarez's promoter told TMZ Sports, he has "nothing to do with the judging." De La Hoya also made it clear he is hoping the rematch doesn't come down to the judges this time.<doc-sep>Canelo Alvarez has to knock out Gennady Golovkin in their rematch Saturday night. So said Oscar De La Hoya. De La Hoya’s choice of words was curious, if not downright bizarre, considering they placed an incredibly heavy burden on his promotional company’s most valuable fighter. He wasn’t speaking only as Alvarez’s promoter, however. He also was speaking as a former fighter. Advertisement As much as anyone associated with the event, De La Hoya understands how careers can be defined by the kind of moment that awaits Alvarez when he takes on Golovkin again at T-Mobile Arena. De La Hoya knows how fleeting these opportunities can be, how once they pass, they’re gone forever. “You can’t turn back time,” De La Hoya said. “You have to seize the moment.” He’s lived the consequences of failing to do that, specifically in what was supposed to be the signature fight of his career, a controversial decision loss to Felix Trinidad of Puerto Rico in 1999. “It’s haunted me forever,” De La Hoya said. LIVE UPDATES: Coverage of Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady Golokvin from Las Vegas » If the strikingly handsome De La Hoya was the Alvarez of his generation, Trinidad played the role of Golovkin, a relentless stalker with devastating power in both hands. Two undefeated welterweights, De La Hoya and Trinidad met in what was called the “Fight of the Millennium” on Sept. 18, 1999. In the buildup to the confrontation, comparisons were made to Ray Leonard’s 14th-round stoppage of Tommy Hearns in 1981. “It’s funny because I fought Trinidad the way Canelo fought Golovkin the first time,” De La Hoya said. Advertisement The description undersells De La Hoya’s defensive performance that night. Canelo Alvarez, left, and Gennady Golovkin are separated after their face-off pose during their weigh-in Friday at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. (Erik Verduzco / Las Vegas Review Journal via AP) Alvarez was a plodder early in his career who gradually improved his movement through an unusual dedication to his craft. De La Hoya, substantially more naturally gifted than Alvarez, was light on his feet and blessed with blinding hand speed. Alvarez boxed well in his fight last year against Golovkin, but ringside observers were divided over how effective he was in neutralizing his opponent’s attack in what was ruled a draw. In De La Hoya’s case, the view was unanimous. De La Hoya was wiping him out. Trinidad couldn’t touch him. Advertisement Despite an obvious difference in class, De La Hoya never tried to finish Trinidad, as he remained content avoiding his punches and slapping him around. The strategy backfired as De La Hoya tired in the later rounds. Lacking the energy required to strike Trinidad after making him miss, De La Hoya was forced into a full-scale retreat over the last three rounds. The decision was a shocker. Trinidad was gifted an undeserved majority decision. Rather than elevate De La Hoya and Trinidad the way Leonard and Hearns’ 14-round battle did them, the contest diminished both fighters. De La Hoya went on to a number of memorable fights and earned hundreds of millions of dollars over his career, but none of them erased the memory of what he did against Trinidad. When he retired, the feeling was that he was something of an underachiever, that he never became the fighter he should have become. “If there’s a fight that I can redo, it would be the last three rounds,” De La Hoya said. “Even though in many people’s eyes I won that fight, those last three rounds were critical.” Advertisement His disappointment was only magnified by his familiarity with the pride and euphoria he experienced after his most courageous performances. He knocked down Ike Quartey in a furious, 12-round attack when he believed he was down on the scorecards in a split-decision victory in 1999. He dropped a split decision to Shane Mosley the following year, but exchanged power punches with him in the center of the ring down the stretch. He stopped hated rival Fernando Vargas in 2002 and did the same to foul-mouthed verbal tormentor Ricardo Mayorga in 2006. “There’s a reason people still talk about me and Vargas or me and Mayorga, me and Mosley, me and Ike Quartey,” De La Hoya said. “It’s because you have to seize the moment.” But Trinidad was more dangerous than any of the fighters he beat, administering beatings that ruined the promising careers of Vargas and David Reid. De La Hoya retired wealthy and without any noticeable signs of brain damage. What if he had tried to knock out Trinidad and ended up in a violent fight that did permanent harm to him? Advertisement De La Hoya doesn’t consider the possibility, thinking more of the regret he harbors. Not wanting Alvarez to endure the same fate, he has made it a point to share his experiences with the Mexican middleweight. “Now that Canelo knows what he has in front in front of him, I strongly feel Canelo is going to go for the kill,” De La Hoya said. “I strongly feel Canelo is going to be aggressive, is going to push him back, just the way I would have done if I would have fought Trinidad the second time around.” Alvarez will have the chance for redemption that De La Hoya never had. The same applies to Golovkin. “Whether it’s Canelo or whether it’s Triple-G, they have to go out there and try to be great,” De La Hoya said. “Not just good. You have to be great. And Saturday night is their opportunity.” Advertisement What they do with that opportunity will determine how they are remembered. dylan.hernandez@latimes.com Twitter@dylanohernandez<doc-sep>The Gennady Golovkin vs. Canelo Alvarez rematch might be the last time we see either man on an HBO platform in the foreseeable future. Just days after the Los Angeles Times reported that Golovkin’s HBO contract was nearing expiration, journalist Lance Pugmire has got another scoop confirming that this is also the final fight of Canelo Alvarez’s deal with the premium cable giant. Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler indicated that he wasn’t exactly satisfied with the $1 million purse for the Kazakhstan native’s May fight vs. Vanes Martirosyan, and according to Pugmire’s article, Golovkin himself apparently felt that “HBO seemed unsupportive of his plan to fight a replacement opponent in May after Alvarez was suspended for six months for submitting two positive tests for clenbuterol.” As for the Canelo side, Oscar De La Hoya seems a little more direct as far as what’s in store for the Mexican superstar, and the grim outlook for HBO Boxing. “It makes me wonder if HBO even wants to be in boxing,” De La Hoya told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday. [...] “Given the circumstances that boxing is in line at this moment, with ESPN, DAZN and the fact that Fox television has paid millions and Showtime’s doing many things, it’s going to be very interesting for us and Canelo to see what HBO can do to keep him. ... HBO’s been my family since I started boxing and it has been my family up until today. I’ve always given HBO the first and last opportunity, but this is a business and I must do what’s best for my fighters. I want to do what’s best for Canelo’s career, and right now particularly, boxing is big business on television, with more than 200 fights on a year.” Alvarez has fought on HBO since 2014, and appeared on the network several times between 2010 and 2012. HBO had a falling out with Golden Boy Promotions, primarily due to problems with then-Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer, which led to Canelo and other Golden Boy fighters appearing on Showtime. When Schaefer resigned from Golden Boy — that’s another story in itself — HBO and De La Hoya patched things up and Canelo returned to HBO. Right now, Golden Boy is essentially one of the few promotions filling HBO’s dates. As mentioned before, HBO’s boxing budget has been substantially slashed from even ten years ago, and Showtime — in large part because of Al Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions, which features many ex-Golden Boy fighters — has the bulk of the top talent at the moment. HBO was not committed to broadcasting the rematch between Eleider Alvarez and Sergey Kovalev (a fight which Alvarez won by KO in a major upset), and it looks like that fight will be shown on ESPN. This isn’t to say Canelo or GGG are destined not to re-sign with HBO, but with PBC’s combined $120+ million per year from FOX and Showtime, streaming service DAZN’s estimated $125 million per year, and ESPN reportedly in the $60 million per range for Top Rank, HBO is not exactly a powerhouse anymore. Their budget is smaller than that of their competitors. HBO Boxing has been in existence for 45 years, but it’s anybody’s guess as to how much longer they’ll commit to airing the sport. Meanwhile, one of the biggest storylines in the aftermath of this Saturday’s pay-per-view rematch in Las Vegas is now the fact that we might see big bidding wars for both Canelo and Golovkin, as the boxing landscape in the US takes a major turn heading into 2019.<doc-sep>
When Canelo Alvarez takes to the ring on Saturday night for his rematch with Gennady Golovkin on HBO pay-per-view, it’ll be the last fight on his current contract with the premium network, and promoter Oscar De La Hoya is openly saying he’s going to explore the options for a new TV deal for his superstar fighter. From the LA Times: “It makes me wonder if HBO even wants to be in boxing. ... Given the circumstances that boxing is in line at this moment, with ESPN, DAZN and the fact that Fox television has paid millions and Showtime’s doing many things, it’s going to be very interesting for us and Canelo to see what HBO can do to keep him.” It’s no secret that over the past few years, boxing has had a diminished role on HBO, with the budget being scaled back and fewer fights happening on what was not too long ago, and for many years, the premier destination for big fights in the United States. As De La Hoya mentions, you’ve got ESPN ponying up for Top Rank (and Golden Boy) fights on its various networks and streaming services, the new DAZN streaming service coming to the U.S., and Showtime and FOX just spent notable money to keep Al Haymon’s fighters on their networks. HBO isn’t what it used to be in the boxing game, and De La Hoya can’t ignore that with what is, to be frank, his lone real star fighter, at least at the moment, in the Golden Boy family. If there’s a better deal out there from someone, he has to be open to it. It’ll be interesting to see what happens here, because the winds have been against HBO for a while now, and if Alvarez leaves the network, you have to wonder how much longer they’re even going to spend money on boxing. Everything comes to an end, as unimaginable as this would have been even a few years ago. Or they might make the deal to keep Canelo and stay on as they have been for the last couple of years.