Gennady Golovkin vs. Daniel Jacobs does 170,000 PPV buys, Oscar De La Hoya questions GGG’s superstar status

Undefeated middleweight king Gennady Golovkin may have defeated Daniel Jacobs earlier this month in New York City, but the knockout specialist didn’t look as dominant as usual (highlights here). While early projections had the fight doing south of 150,000 pay-per-view (PPV) buys, GGG’s promoter, Tom Loeffler, revealed to Yahoo’s Kevin Iole on Friday that the fight actually churned out 170,000. That’s significantly better considering Golovkin was paid $2.5 million to show up and record his first decision win since 2008.

Still, GGG’s most recent PPV appearance is well below that of impending opponent Canelo Alvarez, who did 300,000 buys for his recent TKO effort opposite Liam Smith back in September. As Golovkin and Canelo continue their march towards one another, boxing promoter Oscar De La Hoya revealed in an interview with the LA Times that he’s disappointed in GGG’s selling ability and will have to revise his offer for a Canelo fight.

“Because when Triple-G [Golovkin] and Jacobs does between 100,000 and 200,000 homes, it’s a big risk for me to put up a lot of money up front,” said De La Hoya. “So if we want to make this fight happen, we have to work with each other. It all depends on the pay-per-view and that’s the risk we all have to take.”

Canelo, who arguably took over as boxing’s biggest star when Floyd Mayweather Jr. called it quits, is currently scheduled to fight Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. on May 6 from Las Vegas, Nevada.

“People talk about Golovkin being this big superstar. Why is he selling only between 100,000 and 200,000 homes?” asked De La Hoya. “He’s no Canelo, that’s for sure.”