Julio Cesar Chavez, Top Rank at standstill in talks for Golovkin fight
(Editor's note: Story updated at 10:55 a.m. ET to add Top Rank president Todd duBoef's comments)
Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. has been offered a contract by Top Rank for a pay-per-view bout against Gennady Golovkin that is for 70 percent less money than he'd been offered if he signed a two-fight contract extension with the promoter, Chavez's manager told Yahoo Sports late Wednesday.
In addition, manager Billy Keane said under terms of the new deal offered, Chavez would not get a share of pay-per-view revenues until after Top Rank had made "millions upon millions of dollars."
The former WBC middleweight champion, who now fights as a super middleweight, remains interested in meeting Golovkin in the HBO Pay-Per-View match on July 19 at the Forum in Inglewood, Calif. Keane said Chavez is not interested in signing an extension with Top Rank "at this point."
Chavez accepted Top Rank's financial terms for the Golovkin fight, but he would not agree to sign the extension. When Top Rank removed the extension requirement, it dropped the base pay significantly.
"Julio has had issues [with Top Rank] not treating him fairly," Keane said. "All he wants is to be treated fairly."
Top Rank president Todd duBoef passionately defended the offers the company made to Chavez and said it has a history of treating Chavez more than fairly. He said Top Rank has regularly paid Chavez far more than the minimum financial terms laid out in the deal.
DuBoef said Chavez wants an extremely high financial guarantee to fight Golovkin that Top Rank was willing to pay. But he said there "is a risk profile" that had to be considered if there is no contract extension with Chavez. So Top Rank's position was, if it is going to pay Chavez that high of a salary, it wanted a contract extension in return to protect it against financial risk if Chavez were to lose or the fight underperformed at either the gate or on pay-per-view.
"We have an offer on the table that is a standalone offer that, with some upside, gives him the opportunity to make a good amount of money," duBoef said. "They were like, 'We want way more money.' There was also an offer that addresses the fact that they wanted way more money. There is a risk profile involved, not just for the fight but overall. That offer had a net that protected us against risk against something bad happening on one given night. We needed some protection going forward."
Chavez is one of the sport's biggest attractions and duBoef said it couldn't meet Chavez's significant financial demands without the protection of an extension.
Tom Loeffler of K2, Golovkin's promoter, told Yahoo Sports exclusively on Sunday that he was moving on and beginning talks with HBO about finding another opponent for Golovkin. He said he was open to making the fight with Chavez – Golovkin has fully agreed to terms for the bout – but said he fears he's running out of time and doesn't want Golovkin to miss out on a fight.
Keane said he thinks there is still time to finalize a deal, but he said Top Rank offered Chavez financial parity with Golovkin. While Golovkin is considered the better fighter, Chavez is better known and is a bigger draw who has proven he can sell on pay-per-view. He did more than 475,000 sales in a middleweight title fight with Sergio Martinez in 2012 in Las Vegas.
Keane said he's not ready to reveal specifics of Arum's offer, but said "it's absurd" that Chavez would be expected to take the same amount of money as Golovkin.
