By Dan Ambrose: 140lb contender Jose Benavidez thinks Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (47-1-1, 33 KOs) is scared to fight IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs). Benavidez sees Canelo’s vacating of his WBC middleweight title as a sign that he’s afraid of fighting Triple G.
Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy Promotions said that he gave up the belt because he wasn’t going to negotiate under a deadline and pressure the World Boxing Council was putting on them to negotiate with GGG. However, Benavidez doesn’t buy into that, because he feels that if Canelo honestly wanted the fight with Golovkin, he would have taken it a long time ago before his fight against welterweight Amir Khan last May.
Benavidez thinks that if Khan had beaten Canelo, he would have taken the fight against Golovkin because he’s a warrior with heart. Unfortunately, we’ll never know whether Khan would have fought Golovkin, because he was knocked out in the 6th round by Canelo. However, with the way the judges were scoring the fight, Khan likely would have still lost even if he didn’t get knocked out.
The scoring from two of the judges didn’t appear to match what was going on in the ring, as they had Canelo ahead in the fight at the time of the stoppage by the scores of 49-46 and 48-47.
I personally had Khan ahead four rounds to one at the time of the stoppage. I only gave Canelo the fifth round. The rest of the rounds appeared easy rounds for Khan because he was out-boxing Canelo without any problems. It would have been sad if the fight had gone to the scorecards and Canelo given the decision if Khan had continued to dominate into the second half of the bout.
“I don’t think Triple G is scared of Canelo,” said Benavidez to esnewsreporting.com. “That’s the last thing he’s scared of. 155 is not even a weight class. If Canelo was really about fighting, he would have fought more [at middleweight]. He wouldn’t have vacated his belt. To me, it seems like he’s scared of him [Golovkin]. He was saying after the Khan fight he was ready to fight him. I think if he fights Triple G, he’s going to wait until he gets a little older. Even then, Triple G is a dangerous fighter. I think Triple G is stronger than him. It would be a good fight, but I can’t see it happening. Canelo could have fought him a while back. For this fight, he was supposed to fight him, and he didn’t fight him. If Khan had beaten Canelo, Amir Khan would have fought Triple G. I know he would have fought Golovkin. He’ll fight whoever they put in front of him. He’s a warrior. He has heart, and he’ll fight whoever they put in front of him,” said Benavidez.
It’s quite possible that Benavidez is right about Canelo waiting until Golovkin is older before he finally faces him. That strategy doesn’t always work though, and it might backfire on Canelo if he tries it because he could get beaten by someone along the way while he waits for GGG to age. If Canelo waits on the Golovkin fight for the next six years until he’s 40 before fighting him, he’ll be expected to fight the other fighters like the Charlo brothers. I know I’ve talked about this before, but I think it’s true.
Canelo will need to fight the Charlo brothers and even Erislandy Lara again. Unless we got crazy scoring like we had in the Canelo-Khan fight, Canelo could lose to the Charlos and to Lara. Those are fights that won’t make the kind of money that a fight against Golovkin would make right now. Once Canelo loses to those fighters, then the money and fan interest in a future Canelo-Golovkin fight would drop off.
To be sure, they could still face each other, but the pay-per-view buys would likely be fewer. Further, Canelo would likely need to give Golovkin a bigger purse split than what he’d get right now if he would simply fight him rather than letting the fight marinate for six years or however long he plans on waiting. It’s a bad idea to wait on the Golokvin fight because when he does start to age, he’ll likely lose and then the fan interest will drop of for a Canelo vs. Golovkin fight in the same way the fan interest would drop off after Canelo gets whipped by the Charlo brothers or Lara.