By Dan Ambrose: Mexican star Saul “Canelo” Alvarez says he saw IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin’s fight with Daniel Jacobs (32-2, 29 KOs) on March 18, and his opinion is that Jacobs won the fight. Canelo understands that the judges saw it differently in giving Golovkin a close 12 round unanimous decision, but he still believes that Jacobs did enough to deserve the win.
Canelo doesn’t say why he’s still interested in fighting Golovkin instead of Jacobs. If Canelo really believes that Jacobs won the fight, then he should be clamoring for a fight against him rather than Golovkin. Why fight a guy that was just beaten.
“We saw what we knew already about him,” said Canelo to Fighthub.com about Golovkin’s performance against Jacobs. “Everything we saw was everything we knew already about him. So it was nothing new to us. We saw what we knew already, and that exposed him. My personal opinion, I saw Jacobs winning. I think Jacobs won,” said Canelo.
It’s unclear whether Canelo is serious about him believing that Jacobs won or if he’s just saying that because there’s so much pressure on him from boxing fans to fight Triple G. What better way to get the pressure off than by telling the fans that you think that Golovkin should have lost to Jacobs. The problem is the fans saw the actual fight, so they know that Golovkin won the fight.
Canelo isn’t going to be able to brainwash the fans to believe what he’s saying given that they’ve already seen the fight. Now if the fans still hadn’t seen the Golovkin-Jacobs fight, then they might be persuaded by Canelo’s argument that Golovkin lost. There aren’t too many boxing fans that believe that Jacobs won. There are small pockets of fans and ex-fighters that think Jacobs won, but they’re still pretty on the margin.
Most fans appear to have seen Golovkin winning. But if Canelo wants to convince the boxing world that Jacobs should have won the fight, then he needs to get on his soapbox and shout it out to the world. Maybe the fans will believe him if he repeats that message long and hard enough. I just think it’ll make Canelo look bad in the eyes of the boxing fans, as it’ll come across like he’s trying to weasel out of having to fight GGG by insisting that he should have lost the fight to Jacobs.
Canelo can stand by his principals and tell the world that he won’t fight the loser of that fight, Golovkin. Canelo could then fight Jacobs and tell the fans the reason he’s doing it is because he saw him as the winner. Somehow I don’t think Canelo is going to do that. We don’t even know if Canelo will ever fight Golovkin, period, at least not while he’s still relatively young at 34.
The judges witnessed a different fight than the one Canelo watched. The judges scored the fight for Golovkin 115-112, 115-112 and 114-113. Jacobs was knocked down in the 4th, and he fought like he was afraid through the first 7 rounds. The judges gave Jacobs most of the last 5 rounds, including the 12th, which appeared to be a clear round for Golovkin. The scoring for the fight should have been even wider if the judges had scored the 12th round the way that a lot of boxing fans did.
“It was the same as we already saw,” said Canelo about him being not surprised about Golovkin not looking good against Jacobs. ”The judge saw it different. My personal opinion was Jacobs won. It was the same as we already saw, nothing new. It was the same fighter. It’s just that this fighter moved a lot, moved around the ring. He’s used to fighters being in front of him and throwing bombs. This fighter gave him a hard time because he was able to move around and slip and slide,” said Canelo.
Jacobs moved around the ring, but he really wasn’t effective in his movement. The only reason the fight was close was because Golovkin fought cautiously, throwing mostly his jab. Golovkin has fought opposition in the past that have used movement. If you look at Golovkin’s fights against Daniel Geale, Martin Murray, Kell Brook and Gabriel Rosado, those guys moved just as much if not more than Jacobs did. The reason why Golovkin was more effective in those fights was because he was more willing to throw power shots. He wasn’t just trying to jab all the time like he did against those fighters.
It was a mistake for Golovkin to use jabbing as his main game plan for the Jacobs fight, because when he did throw power shots, he was landing almost every time. Golovkin rarely missed with his power shots. In fact, he landed with more accuracy than Jacobs did. That’s another reason why the judges gave Golovkin the win. He was connecting with a higher percentage all throughout the fight. Judges aren’t blind. When they see a fighter missing over and over again with their power shots and jabs the way that Jacobs was, they’re going to score the fight in the favor of the other fighter. In this case, the judges saw Golovkin as the better fighter.
Canelo can complain about it all he wants, but the judges don’t agree with him. They don’t have an axe to grind like Canelo might have. Canelo has been bombarded by boxing fans for the last 2 years for him failing to agree to fight Golovkin. Canelo has probably lost a great deal of fans for him failing to take the fight. You can say that Canelo is letting the fight marinate, but the fans don’t see it that way. They see Canelo as being afraid of GGG. When you vacate your WBC middleweight title just to avoid a fight with Golovkin, as Canelo did, many fans read you as a coward. That’s how a lot of fans see Canelo now. He can say Jacobs should have won against Golovkin until he’s blue in the face, but he lacks the credibility to believed. If Canelo didn’t have a reason to say something like that, then he might be believed by the fans.
“There’s many ways to beat him,” said Canelo in explaining how to defeat Golovkin. “There’s many ways. Not only that way. There’s many ways,” said Canelo.
I don’t think Canelo will beat Golovkin by trying to use the same method that Jacobs used. That method has been used in back to back fights by Kell Brook and Jacobs. Golovkin is now going to be ready for that approach if he ever faces Canelo or anyone else. Canelo’s main weapon is his left hook. He likes to use as a counter when his opponents get in close. When his opponents are on the outside, Canelo is pretty much helpless if they’re going to jab him a lot, as we saw with Floyd Mayweather Jr. What Mayweather showed in that fight was the fact that when you don’t get near to Canelo, he can’t throw his left hook. He’s pretty much helpless at that point.
Canelo’s jab isn’t good enough for him to beat good fighters from the outside. If Golovkin decides he’s just going to jab Canelo like he did Jacobs and David Lemieux, I suspect he’ll lose by a much more lopsided manner. Canelo has short arms, and he can’t compete with Golovkin if he decides he’s going to fight him on the outside. None of this will really matter if Canelo never fights Golovkin. At this point, we don’t know if the two ever will face each other. You know that Golovkin wants the fight, but we don’t know how Canelo and his promoters at Golden Boy Promotions feel.
Canelo better make sure he wins his next fight against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr,. on May 6 because he’ll look mighty funny if he gets knocked out. That’s the fight that Canelo wanted instead of GGG. If he can’t even win that fight, then it’ll be affirming GGG’s opinion of him.
