By Dan Ambrose: Former two division world champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (47-1-1, 33 KOs) finally broke his silence about the upcoming fight between IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs) and welterweight Kell “Special K” Brook (36-0, 25 KOs) on September 10.
Canelo points out that in his fight against welterweight Amir Khan, he only made him come up in weight one division to fight him at a catch-weight of 155 pounds. Canelo says that Brook has to move up two divisions to fight Triple G at 160lbs. Canelo sees that as potentially harder for Brook than what he was asking Khan to do against him. Canelo further states that he’ll beat Golovkin when they face each other next year in the fall.
“Of course,” Canelo said to RingTV.com about his fight against Golovkin next year. “I’m going to beat him.”
To be honest, I think we’ll be lucky if Canelo gets 3,000 miles of Golovkin in 2017. I don’t think Canelo will face Golovkin. If Golovkin looks impressive in destroying welterweight Kell Brook on September 10th and in his next fight in December of this year, then I think it’s very likely that Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy will kick the Ganelo-Golovkin fight down the road another year by pushing it to 2018. By that point, Golovkin will be 36-years-old and Canelo 27, and still in his prime.
A lot of fans have been comparing the Golovkin-Brook fight to Canelo’s match against welterweight Amir Khan last May, a fight in which Canelo brutally knocked the fragile-chinned Khan out in round six of a pay-per-view bout on HBO. Golovkin hasn’t taken nearly as much criticism from the boxing community as Canelo did for facing Khan. One reason for that is because Brook is such a huge welterweight. He’s been boiling down to fight in that weight class for some time, and he probably should have been fighting at junior middleweight or better yet at middleweight already. In the kickoff press conference with Golovkin in New York, Brook reportedly out-weighed Golovkin.
“All of his opponents have been the easy road,” Alvarez said about Golovkin. “He has never fought someone who has really pushed him or taken him to the next level. All of his opponents have been easy opponents.”
I get the impression that the 25-year-old Canelo isn’t happy that Golovkin isn’t getting raked over the coals for fighting welterweight Kell Brook the way that he was worked over by fans and the media for facing welterweight Amir Khan on May 7 this year. While Golovkin is being celebrated by fans and the media alike for fighting Brook, Canelo was getting skewered by fans and the media for taking on the often knocked out Khan. Perhaps one big reason why Golovkin isn’t getting criticized is because Brook is an undefeated welterweight. Brook has never been knocked out before. He’s seen as one of the best welterweights in the division if not the best. Golovkin didn’t hand pick and easy mark with previous KO losses to lightweight Breidis Prescott and light welterweight Danny Garcia.
There’s really not much difference between Canelo and Golovkin’s opponents, to be honest. Canelo has only fought three good fighters during his career in Floyd Mayweather Jr., Erislandy Lara and Miguel Cotto. Golovkin would likely KO all three of them. Canelo lost to Mayweather in 2013, and beat Lara by a HIGHLY controversial 12 round split decision in 2014, and beat Cotto by a narrow decision.
Canelo also fought Austin Trout, a guy that Golovkin would likely destroy as well. You can’t say that any of the guys that Canelo has fought during his career would be able to hang with Triple G. Lara would run from him, and likely get taken out with body shots, which is the main weakness for the Cuban fighter.
Trout wouldn’t be able to keep Golovkin off of him. Trout would be another Dominic Wade type of opponent for Golovkin. It would be too easy. Trout fought Canelo to a standstill in their fight in 2013. I scored that fight a 12 round draw. I don’t think either guy did enough to win.
“The main difference is that Brook is going up two weight classes,” said Alvarez. “I only made Amir Khan go up one weight class.”
That’s a joke what Canelo says about him making Khan move up only one weight division. What Canelo doesn’t say is he rehydrated and looked absolutely huge compared to Khan on fight night. We didn’t get an official weight by HBO on Canelo the night of the fight against Khan.
It’s unclear why Canelo’s weight wasn’t disclosed for that fight, but there are some boxing fans who believe that he wasn’t weighed in because he was so heavy. I thought Canelo looked like he was in the 180s. Khan looked like he weighed around 160. There was no way that Khan was going to be able to beat the much bigger looking Canelo on the night because he had no margin of error in that fight.
It doesn’t matter that Khan only had to move up eight pounds to 155 for the fight against Canelo instead of 13 pounds that Brook will be moving up for the Golovkin fight. Without there being a rehydration clause to keep Canelo from rehydrating past a certain point, there was no chance for Khan to win the fight. Khan says that he asked for a rehydration limit during negotiations with Canelo but he was refused.
When Khan agreed to fight Canelo without a rehydration limit, he effectively lost the fight with that one glaring mistake. If Khan could have kept Canelo from rehydrating past 165 or 167, he would have had a good chance of winning. There’s a big difference between Khan being out-weighed by seven pounds and being outweighed by as much as 20 to 25 pounds. If Canelo came into the fight in the 180s against a 160lb Khan, there was no way that Khan could win with him being so much lighter than Canelo.
As far as Canelo beating Golovkin in 2017, I don’t see that happening. I think Canelo will be one of Golovkin’s easiest fights of his career, because he doesn’t have the mobility to avoid Golovkin. Canelo’s short legs won’t be able to keep him from escaping the pressure that Golovkin is putting on him. Once Golovkin walks Canelo down, he’ll turn him into another Marco Antonio Rubio and bludgeon him against the ropes until the fight is halted in the 1st or 2nd round.
Canelo is no better than Rubio in taking punishment, and he moves about as well as Rubio. Golovkin defeated Rubio in October 2014 after Rubio failed to make weight. I think Canelo will make weight against Golovkin, but I see him ending just like Rubio did by him being backed up against the ropes and chopped down by Golovkin by the 2nd round. Canelo has the wrong fighting style to survive against Golovkin, and he doesn’t seem to take punishment well at all. Trout and Mayweather both had Canelo hurt.
Here are Canelo’s best opponents in his 11-year pro career:
Floyd Mayweather Jr
Miguel Cotto
Erislandy Lara
Austin Trout
Ryan Rhodes
Shane Mosley
James Kirkland
Josesito Lopez
Kermit Cintron
Alfonso Gomez
Jose Miguel Cotto
Lovemore N’Dou
Carlos Baldomir
Matthew Hatton
Lanardo Ryner
Carlos Herrera
Luciano Leonel Cuello
Those are all guys that Golovkin would likely destroy. Do you honestly believe that Mayweather, Cotto, Hatton, Mosley, Kirkland, Angulo, Lara and Trout could hang with Golovkin for any length of time? I don’t. I think all of them would get badly hurt, even Mayweather. Of course, I don’t think Mayweather would ever agree to fight Golovkin because he would know that it would end badly for him. Mayweather would have no margin of error against Golovkin, because all it would take is one big punch for him to lay him out for the 10 count.
Here are Golovkin’s best opponents:
David Lemieux
Martin Murray
Willie Monroe Jr
Marco Antonio Rubio
Daniel Geale
Curtis Stevens
Matthew Macklin
Gabriel Rosado
Grzegorz Proksa
Nobuhiro Ishida
Kassim Ouma
Dominic Wade
I think Golovkin’s opposition fairs pretty well with the mostly poor opposition that Canelo has fought. They’re basically the same.
Canelo will be fighting on September 17 against WBO junior middleweight champion Liam Smith at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. That fight is arguably far worse than Golovkin’s fight against Kell Brook, because Liam Smith is seen as the weakest of the champions at 154. In other words, this is seen as another cherry picking fight for Canelo. Instead of the 170-180+ pounds Canelo rising up to fight a guy his own size in the middleweight division like Daniel Jacobs or Golovkin, he’s facing a lighter fighter than himself in Liam Smith. That’s a weak move, especially given the circumstances of Canelo vacating his WBC middleweight title recently. Canelo should have taken the fight with Golovkin at that time because the criticism that he’s received for vacating the fight to avoid the Golovkin fight likely has hurt him more than he knows. I don’t think the fight will be bigger next year between Golovkin and Canelo than it would have been had he accepted it in 2016, because I think a lot of fans are now turned off by him after he failed to take the fight.