Golovkin picks Canelo to beat Cotto

By Boxing News - 07/22/2015 - Comments

Canelo Alvarez vs Erislandy Lara(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) By Dan Ambrose: Superstar Gennady Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs) is picking former WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (45-1-1, 32 KOs) to come out victorious in his fight against WBC middleweight belt holder Miguel Cotto (40-4, 33 KOs) next November on HBO.

Golovkin didn’t say why he feels that Canelo will be the one that gets the win in the Cotto-Canelo fight, but it’s likely die to Canelo’s combination of youth, speed and punching power. Cotto isn’t as fast, he’s older at 34, and he’s had a lot of wars in his many years in the ring.

“I think so Canelo,” Golovkin said via ESPN’s SportsNation.

When asked who he thinks would personally give him the most trouble in the ring, Golovkin said “Maybe Canelo. He’s young, new style I never seen before.

I think it’s a tossup who would give Golovkin the most problems in the middleweight and junior middleweight divisions. It might not even be Canelo or Cotto who would give Golokvin the most problems. It might be someone like Andy Lee or Tureano Johnson who give Golovkin the most problems of all.

Canelo has been beaten before by Floyd Mayweather Jr., and nearly beaten by Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara, but those fighters were slick and made it difficult for Canelo to land his shots on them. The guys that Canelo has historically done well against were the limited fighters that stood in front of him and tries to slug it out. In those fights, Cotto has done well in with the exception of his first fight against Antonio Margarito and his 2009 match against Filipino star Manny Pacquiao.

Canelo will likely use both boxing and slugging to get the better of Cotto when he gets him inside the ring in November in Las Vegas, Nevada.

What will be really interesting to see is if the winner of the Cotto-Canelo fight will turn around and face Golokvin or if they’ll decide to beg off, saying that they’re not middleweights and for that reason they shouldn’t have to face Golovkin.

It’s obviously a harder argument for Canelo to make given that he rehydrates to his mid-170s, which makes him a light heavyweight. If a 175lb Canelo doesn’t see himself as a 160lb middleweight, then that’s troubling. Canelo is clearly a middleweight, but one who tends to fight junior middleweights instead of guys his own size.

The contracts for the Cotto-Canelo fight still haven’t been finalized, but the fight is still expected to be announced soon, perhaps even this week. Even if it drags on longer, they still have another month to work on the contract before things start looking kind of dire.

Unlike the Mayweather vs. Andre Berto fight, the Cotto vs. Canelo fight needs to be announced as soon as possible so that the two fighters can start marketing the fight to get boxing fans interested in purchasing it on HBO pay-per-view. These guys will need to work hard to promote the fight because neither of them has been ever to bring in more than 300,000 pay-per-view buys when they were the A-side for one of their pay-per-view bouts in the headliner fight.



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