By Dan Ambrose: Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs) did a great job of beating the smaller Miguel Cotto last November to take his WBC middleweight title in their fight on HBO PPV. However, Canelo apparently didn’t do a good enough job to impress the some of the oddsmakers, who already have IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs) as the favorite to defeat the young 25-year-old Canelo later this year when/if they face each other in a unification fight in September 2016.
The betting site Bovada has Golovkin as the favorite to give Canelo another loss.
This is the line:
Golovkin -350
Alvarez +265
One problem that may be keeping Canelo from being the favorite against Golovkin is that he’s had too many close fights in the last couple of years.
Canelo barely beat Austin Trout, Erislandy Lara and Miguel Cotto. Those were all close fights if you ignore the wacky judges’ in all three fights.
Canelo arguably lost the fight to Lara, and his fight against Trout could have been scored a draw if not for the knockdown Canelo scored. Of course, you’ve also got Canelo’s 12 round decision loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2013. That should have been a 12 unanimous decision, but again with the wacky scoring when it comes to Canelo’s fights. One judge had the fight scored a draw. It was pretty sad to see, because you have to wonder what fight that judge was watching.
While Canelo has been struggling against the likes of Lara, Cotto and Trout, Golovkin has been dominating his opposition in scoring knockout after knockout. Golovkin has knocked out all of his opponents over a seven-year time frame. Recently, Golovkin stopped Willie Monroe Jr., Martin Murray, David Lemieux and Daniel Geale. Interestingly enough, Lemieux and Monroe Jr. are two of the possibilities for Canelo’s next fight. Other possibilities are WBO light middleweight champion Liam Smith and Gabriel Rosado.
An offer was reportedly made to Liam Smith to face Canelo. Why Canelo would want to fight a junior middleweight is the big question. You would think it was bad enough that Canelo won the WBC lineal title with a catch-weight of 155lbs, but now Canelo might defend the belt against a junior middleweight from the 154lb division instead of a middleweight. If that happens, you can imagine many of the great middleweight warriors of the past must be rolling over in their graves.
Unfortunately, we still don’t know if Canelo will face Golovkin later this year. We know that the World Boxing Council gave Canelo the opportunity to fight a voluntary defense of his newly won WBC middleweight title. But there’s no guarantee that Canelo will defend the title against Golovkin. Canelo can always insist on fighting Golovkin at a catch-weight of 155lbs.
If Golovkin says no, then Canelo can either walk away and start defending the title against other fighters and wait to see if the WBC will do anything about it, or he can vacate the belt. I honestly don’t think the WBC will strip Canelo of his title. I think they’ll either give him another voluntary defense after they vote on it, of course, or they change their rules to allow their WBC champions to use catch-weights for ALL of their title defenses, even their mandatory defenses. Once the WBC does that, then Golovkin won’t have any other choice but to boil down to 155, or whatever catch-weight that Canelo chooses.
Comments are closed.