If you haven’t heard by now, there seems to be some trouble in paradise between Canelo Alvarez and Golden Boy Promotions. Last week Canelo was stripped of his IBF middleweight title as he and mandatory challenger Sergiy Derevyanchenko couldn’t come to terms for their ordered fight. But Canelo has since come out to say he was completely unaware that his promoter had struck a deal with the IBF to either finalize that deal by last Monday or have his belt taken away.
“I’m very upset and ashamed with my fans, to be unfairly stripped of my belt by the IBF, but specially when I did not have the knowledge of the agreement that GBP match maker had signed,” Alvarez wrote Friday evening on social media.
Canelo’s ordered fight with Derevyanchenko had its purse bid postponed as both fighters requested a little more time to hash out their agreement, and for DAZN (who have an exclusive agreement with Canelo) to approve Derevyanchenko as an opponent. To make it happen Canelo would’ve had to take a $5M short on his $35M license fee from DAZN, and Derevyanchenko ultimately got the nod of approval from the streaming service, but Monday’s deadline still came and went without the sides agreeing to a deal, causing Canelo to get stripped of his belt.
ESPN’s sources claim that the purse money was never settled, with Golden Boy’s last offer being $5.5M while Derevyanchenko’s side was looking for $7M. Golden Boy promoter Oscar De La Hoya would then come out to publicly claim that Derevyanchenko never wanted the fight in the first place.
Golden Boy matchmaker Robert Diaz was said to the be point person in the IBF’s communications regarding Canelo, and company president Eric Gomez backs Diaz, saying he did nothing wrong and that the IBF has simply mistreated Canelo.
“(Diaz) did nothing wrong,” Gomez wrote. “The IBF has been unfair to Canelo since he won the title in May. Oscar De La Hoya and I stand by Roberto 1000%.”
At this time it’s expected that Derevyanchenko may now take on former titleholder Gennady Golovkin for the now vacant middleweight title. And as for Canelo, well, Golden Boy probably has some smoothing over to do.