Is Demetrius Andrade a champion without a country?
It’s recently been reported that DAZN has given unified middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez two options for his next fight. Shockingly neither of those options is Demetrius “Boo Boo” Andrade who’s the WBO champion. Instead it appears DAZN will only approve a trilogy with Gennady “GGG” Golovkin, or WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev.
Golden Boy Promotions has been in the exploratory stages of planning Alvarez’s next fight with Sergey Kovalev, Jaime Munguia, Callum Smith, and Demetrius Andrade all being considered as potential opponents. The glaring omission on this list is Gennady Golovkin.
Oscar De La Hoya and Alvarez have made it clear that they don’t think the former unified champion hasn’t fulfilled his end of the bargain since their 2018 bout. With Golovkin taking an extended layoff before only fighting an unknown Steve Rolls in contrast to Alvarez fighting Rocky Fielding and top contender Danny Jacobs.
The two sides entered into a brief negotiation before Canelo’s team broke off the negotiations over venue.
Now enter Andrade who’s been actively pursuing a fight with Alvarez since 2013. Andrade has even moved up in weight and won the WBO title, which was the only remaining title available in the division. The champ also left his longtime promoter Banner Promotions to join DAZN to pursue both Golovkin and Alvarez.
If DAZN is bypassing him while pushing for Kovalev and GGG as opponents for a fall clash with the Mexican champion, that’s a blatant slap in the face. What makes the omission even worse is that the Khazakh fighter seems to have the green light to pursue a fight with WBO super welterweight champion Jaime Munguia.
If DAZN is behind the curtain on these moves it puts Andrade’s future in doubt, as there aren’t any viable opponents under the banner for him to fight.
There’s also another elephant in the room. What is Eddie Hearn’s position at DAZN? He’s officially DAZN’s director of boxing programming and has been very vocal about getting Andrade in the mix with both of the platform’s top middleweights.
It would seem that Hearn is being undermined by the prospect of the WBO champion is being bypassed and not considered. It’s also a huge blow to the champ’s chances of ever landing the fight because Golden Boy finally seemed willing to make the bout.
There are a lot of moving pieces to this story and we at 3kingsboxing.com will be carefully monitoring it.
By: Corey Cunningham
