By Dan Ambrose: IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin thinks that people are underestimating the speed that Amir “King” Khan (31-3, 19 KOs) has going for him in his fight against WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs) on May 7. Khan, 29, has been pretty much written off by a lot of boxing fans.
”People underestimate Khan’s speed #Canelo vs Khan #Canelo,” Golovkin said on his Twitter.
Golovkin is wise to see Khan as being overlooked in this fight because he’s got much better hand speed and mobility than Canelo can ever hope to have. Khan is so much faster than Canelo, and that’s going to help him a lot in this fight. Khan has the advantage of being able to study Canelo’s fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. so that he can learn from what Mayweather did to him.
Sure, Canelo can study Khan’s fights against Breidis Prescott, Lamont Peterson and Danny Garcia to try and figure out how to beat him. However, Khan won’t be fighting like that against Canelo. When Khan fought Garcia, Prescott and Peterson, he was fighting in an aggressive manner that made him vulnerable to their big shots. Khan has already said that he doesn’t plan on taking a lot of chances against Canelo because he knows how big he is and how much of a dangerous puncher. The worst thing that Khan can do is to get in the ring and start attacking Canelo.
Canelo is listed as a -450 by Bovado, and Khan +325.
The problem that Canelo has is there’s nothing he can do to prepare for the kind of hand speed that Khan has going for him. There aren’t many sparring partners that have anywhere near the same kind of hand speed that Khan has. Even if Canelo could find some guys to help him get ready for the Khan fight, he’ll still be too slow and flat-footed to handle his speed on the night.
The Canelo-Khan fight will be televised on HBO Championship Boxing from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Golovkin obviously would like to see Canelo beat Khan because the money he can make will be much more in a fight against Canelo than it would be if he fought Khan. Of course, if Khan beats Canelo, it will help increase his popularity by making him a bigger star in the United States than he is right now. However, I still see Canelo as the much bigger draw in the U.S than Khan.
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