Hopkins thinks Golovkin should give Canelo the catch-weight handicap he wants

By Boxing News - 05/05/2016 - Comments

Image: Hopkins thinks Golovkin should give Canelo the catch-weight handicap he wantsBy Dan Ambrose: Bernard Hopkins of Golden Boy Promotions says IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin should give Golden Boy promoter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez whatever catch-weight handicap he asks for in order for them to face each other.

Canelo maintains he’s a junior middleweight rather than a middleweight, and he feels he should be able to get a weight handicap for a fight against Golovkin. Hopkins came down in weight to fight the more popular Oscar De La Hoya at a 158lb catch-weight in September 2004. De La Hoya had just recently moved up to middleweight at the time three months earlier in beating WBO middleweight champion Felix Sturm by a controversial 12 round decision in June 2004.

The difference here is that Golovkin is the WBC mandatory challenger and he doesn’t want to fight at a catch-weight. He wants Canelo’s WBC title. Canelo would likely ask Golovkin to come down in weight five pounds, not two pounds in the case of Hopkins. Making 158 isn’t as hard as melting own to 155 to fight a much younger fighter like Canelo, who seems to be quite good at melting down to 155 and then blasting back up into the 170s without it hurting his body and his performances. Golovkin is 34, he’s not young like Canelo, and he would likely find it hard to melt down to 155 to give Canelo the handicap that he’d be asking for.

“Why give ‘Triple G’ [Golovkin] a pass?” Hopkins said to the latimes.com. “It’s not too premature to fight [Golovkin]. Both sides have to come to a reasonable, common weight that both are comfortable at. Who’s the star? The superstar fighting on Cinco de Mayo carries the numbers and is the guy.”

It’s going to be interesting to see if Golovkin gives Canelo the weight handicap he wants by agreeing to the catch-weight. If Golovkin does agree to the cathch-weight and lose the fight due to him being weakened, he likely will never get a rematch with Canelo at the full weight for the middleweight division. Golovkin would have to live with the loss. He’d get a good payday out of the fight but his career would be tarnished due to the defeat. People wouldn’t put an asterisk next to Canelo’s win in the record books by pointing out that he had a strength draining catch-weight handicap that helped him win the fight.

Golovkin isn’t going to be fighting Canelo on Cinco de Mayo, welterweight Amir Khan is. I don’t think Canelo and his promoter Oscar De La Hoya are going to be comfortable fighting Golovkin at a reasonable catch-weight like Hopkins is talking about. If the fight takes place at 158, it would be too close to 160 and it wouldn’t have enough of a weakening effect on Golovkin for Canelo to gain an advantage. He would then likely be knocked out quickly by Golovkin in the same way Dominic Wade was. Canelo is too easy to hit and his style is made to order for Golovkin. The only catch-weight handicap that works for Canelo would be for him to force Golovkin to fight him at 155 so that Golovkin is weakened significantly and then Canelo can possibly hang with him and get a victory.

Let us be real about this; the whole catch-weight thing is something that is designed to weaken Golovkin so that he’s not going to be at his best. It wouldn’t be a bad thing if Canelo was a welterweight who needed a catch-weight to have a chance against Golovkin. In this case, Canelo is just a young guy that weighs the same amount as Golovkin. Being young, Canelo can take off weight and put it back on without it hurting him the way it likely will when he’s Golovkin’s age.

“I’m a 154-pounder,” said Alvarez to the latimes.com.

Canelo says he’s a 154lb fighter, then he needs to vacate the WBC middleweight title if he feels he can’t fight at the full weight for the middleweight division. If Canelo was someone holding a job in the real world, he couldn’t tell people he’s only partially a worker because he’s not fully competent and needs a handicap at the job. Canelo would be fired if he couldn’t do the job 100 percent like the other workers.

If Canelo can’t fight at the full weight for the middleweight division, then he has no business being the WBC middleweight champion. Asking his mandatory challenger Gennady Golovkin to fight him at a catch-weight like his voluntary challengers just makes Canelo look really bad in my view. He’s changing the division by using catch-weights as the WBC middleweight champion. I’m not sure that catch-weights were designed for champions to use it on other fighters in the same division. I think the idea behind catch-weights was for guys from lower weight classes to move up to fight champions. Canelo is taking the concept of catch-weights and twisting it to his advantage.