By Dan Ambrose: WBA World welterweight champion Keith “One Time” Thurman says that Floyd Mayweather Jr. has advised the 25-year-old WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs) to stay away from fighting unbeaten IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs).
Canelo is behind the eight ball right now, given that he’s the WBC 160lb champion and the World Boxing Council has mandated that he fight Golovkin after Canelo’s next fight against Amir Khan on May 7 next month.
If Khan wins the fight, he’ll be in the same position in having to defend the WCB against Golovkin, who is the interim WBC champion at this moment.
“That’s a good fight. The fans are going to love that fight,” Thurman said about a Golovkin vs. Canelo fight to Fighthub.com. “It’s going to be an explosive fight. You’ve got two of the biggest punchers in the world of boxing right now. They’re devastating. Canelo hasn’t lost since he faced Floyd Mayweather. He [Canelo] had a good performance against Miguel Cotto. Triple G, we haven’t seen anyone withstand what Triple G puts out. Floyd Mayweather advised Canelo to stay away from Triple G, and there’s plenty of other people that would agree. But Canelo has evolved to a degree. He’s become a better boxer. The real question is how much of a better boxer has he become? Hopefully, he shows it against Triple G, because he’s going to need to use all of his skills to be victorious in that fight,” said Thurman.
It’s starting to look like Canelo I going to follow Mayweather’s advice by him dodging the Golovkin fight. All Canelo needs to do in order to avoid Golovkin is to continue with his catch-weight requests, and he’ll likely be able to avoid the fight altogether. Of course, Canelo will lose his WBC title in the process by having it stripped from him by the WBC because Canelo cannot force a mandatory challenger to agree to fight him at 155 or any other catch-weight. Canelo can only coerce his voluntary challengers to fight him at a catch-weight as a condition for them to get the fight.
Golovkin isn’t going to play that, and Canelo can’t force him to. If Canelo gives up his belt and/or has it stripped from him by the WBC, we’ll then enter into the waiting phase for the Golovkin-Canelo fight. Canelo and his promoters at Golden Boy could wait less than a year before they take that fight, or they could wait a number of years for Golovkin to age or get beaten by someone else.
Avoidance has it’s drawbacks though. Canelo would lose fans, be seen as a coward by some, and it would hurt the image that he’s been trying to create. Canelo wants to be seen as a warrior, but it’s hard to be seen as a warrior when you duck opponents.
Canelo does appear to have improved a little bit since his loss to Mayweather Jr. in 2013, but I don’t think he’s improved enough to beat a guy like Golovkin. It’s really hard to tell how much Canelo has improved because he looked terrible against Erislandy Lara in 2014, and Canelo’s other fights have come against the smaller and lighter 5’7” Miguel Cotto, Alfredo Angulo and James Kirkland. Those were not middleweights. Cotto may have been the WBC middleweight champion by virtue of his 10th round knockout win over an old and gimpy-kneed Sergio Martinez, but Cotto wasn’t a true middleweight. Canelo’s other wins came against Angulo and Kirkland. Those are mediocre junior middleweights. It’s hard to say whether Canelo has improved at all since his loss to Mayweather.
If Canelo isn’t going to fight Golovkin, then he needs to move down to the junior middleweight division and stop with the catch-weights. I’m sure he can still make the weight if he puts in a little more work, and then he could fight guys like the Charlo brothers and Lara. Fighting welterweights would be a bad idea because it’ll make Canelo look like he only wants to fight smaller guys or lesser fighters his own size.