De La Hoya to Golovkin: Make sure you answer your phone tomorrow

By Boxing News - 05/08/2016 - Comments

1-CaneloKhan_Hoganphotos4By Dan Ambrose: WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez’s brutal 6th round knockout win over Amir Khan (31-4, 19 KOs) tonight appears to have given Canelo and his promoter Oscar De La Hoya a surge of confidence all of a sudden, because both of them were showing signs of courage after the fight tonight.

Canelo, 25, invited Golovkin to enter the ring after he had dispatched Khan with a right hand because he says he was ready to fight Golovkin too. De La Hoya had a personal message to Golovkin, saying that he should make sure he answers his phone on Sunday. It’s surprising what a knockout over a welterweight will do to one’s self confidence.

If Canelo and De La Hoya are interested in trying to weasel a catch-weight handicap for Canelo against Golovkin, then they need to forget it because Golovkin says he won’t do it.
“I am old school. Middleweight is 160,” said Golovkin to ESPN.com. “I respect the sport of boxing.”

Ouch! I guess Golovkin is implying that Canelo and De La Hoya don’t respect boxing with their use of catch-weights rather than going old school and fighting at the full weight for the middleweight division like the warriors that have fought at that weight in the past.

“Golovkin, make sure you answer your phone tomorrow,” said De La Hoya via ESPN.com. “We will call you. Make sure you answer your phone tomorrow.”

Canelo needs to re-watch his fight against Khan because he didn’t have an easy time of it. I had Khan winning the fight four rounds to one heading into the 6th round. Khan won the first four rounds on my scorecard, and it wasn’t until the 5th round that Canelo turned things around with a strong enough round to win his first round.

Canelo couldn’t hit the side of the barn with his shots. The punch stats for the fight looked backwards, showing Canelo landing at a better connect percentage rather than Khan. I had Khan landing at a higher clip and Canelo missing almost everything he threw. Canelo looked very limited against Khan other than the knockout punch he landed in the 6th.

The attendance for the Canelo-Khan fight was definitely good with 16,540 fans showing up to see the contest at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. The fight was televised on HBO pay-per-view. We won’t know how many PPV buys the fight generated for a while.

YouTube video

Canelo landed 64 of 170 punches for a connect percentage of 38 percent, according to Compu-Box. For his part, Khan landed 48 of 166 punches for a connect percentage of 29 percent. I don’t agree with those punch stats. Those punch stats seem off just like the recent punch stats for the Lucian Bute vs. Badou Jack fight, which had Badou landing more punches at a higher percentage than Bute. I had it the other way around.

You’ve got to respect Khan, 29, for moving up two divisions to take the fight with Canelo. It was a courageous thing for him to do. There’s not too many high level fighters that would have taken that kind of risk. Khan got a reported payday of $13 million for this fight.
Khan said after the fight that he wants to see Canelo step it up and face Golovkin.

“I think it’s time for Canelo to step up to GGG, just like I stepped up to fight him,” said Khan. I tried as much as I could and trained very hard for the fight. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the result I wanted. Although I feel strong at this weight, I am naturally a lighter fighter and plan to go back down to welterweight. But, l like to challenge myself and that is why I took this fight. I want to be the best, and to be the best I have to fight the best,” said Khan.

The shot that Khan was knocked out with would have knocked out normal middleweights. Khan just got lazy and was nailed.

I don’t know how serious Canelo and De La Hoya are about fighting Golovkin. The two were obviously talking bold tonight because they had the cameras on them and they absolutely needed to say something about the Golovkin fight under that circumstance. If they had ignored the questions and said they want no part of Golovkin, they would have lost a ton of fans in the process. That’s why you need to take what Canelo and De La Hoya are saying right now with a grain of salt.

You can trust but you need to verify, as Ronald Reagan once said. If De La Hoya and Canelo don’t contact Golovkin, or if they call him and start saying he has to fight at a catch-weight of 155lbs, then you’ll know that they weren’t serious about taking the fight with him and were just name dropping so that would get attention and respect from the boxing fans.

I ‘m naturally 147, and this challenge came, and it was hard to turn down,” said Khan via ESPN.com. “My natural weight is 147, and I will probably go back down to that.”

I don’t think Khan will be any better off at 147 than he is at middleweight. For him to be able to be a major player, he’ll need to be able to stand up to the big shots from guys like Danny Garcia, Errol Spence, Keith Thurman, Kell Brook and Shawn Porter. I don’t think Khan can do that. There’s also the question of whether Khan can strip off all the muscle weight he put on for the Canelo fight and still fight effectively at welterweight. It’s not easy for fighters to lose weight to fight at lower weight classes once they’ve bulked up. I believe it’s a one-way trip, and Khan could find out the hard way that he won’t be the same fighter once he resumes fighting at 147.

If Canelo chooses not to fight Golovkin next, he’ll be stripped of his WBC title by the World Boxing Council. That’s what I expect to happen. Behind closed doors, I see Golovkin being told he’ll need to fight at 155 if he wants the Canelo fight. Golovkin fails to agree to that, the fight offer will be off the table.