By Allan Fox: Saul “Canelo” Alvarez’s team seems convinced that he’ll not only add Gennady “GGG” Golovkin’s scalp to his collection but he’ll beat him in style by knocking out the 35-year-old Triple G. Canelo’s trainer Eddy Reynoso believes that Canelo can knockout Golovkin to become the best fighter in boxing today. Reysosa gained confident in the 26-year-old Canelo after watching him dominate former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision last Saturday night in a catchweight fight at 164.5 pounds on HBO pay-per-view at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Canelo fighting in the super middleweight division in beating someone as big as Chavez Jr. has Reynoso believing he can do the same thing to Golovkin when he gets him inside the ring in their fight that is scheduled for September 16 at a still to be determined venue.
“This fight left us satisfied; it gave us the guideline to know of what we are able in 160 pounds after having fought with [Chavez Jr.] endured many blows,” said Reynoso to ESPN Deportes about Canelo’s win over Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. last Saturday night.
I think for a lot of boxing fans, Canelo really didn’t accomplish much against Chavez Jr. in beating him nu a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision last Saturday. Chavez Jr. looked frail from weight loss. The casual boxing fans didn’t know the difference between this Chavez Jr. and the one in the past, but the hardcore fans that remembered him at his best knew something was wrong with him.
It’s pretty easy to understand what the problem was with Chavez Jr. He looked terribly thin, as if he had been on a serious diet. It’s disappointing that Golden Boy boss Oscar De La Hoya hasn’t pointed out how thin and emaciated Chavez Jr. was for the Canelo fight, because that should have been the first thing came out of his mouth when De La Hoya started to discuss the Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight at the post-fight press conference last Saturday. But if De La Hoya had talked about how thin Chavez Jr. was, then it would have invited criticism leveled at him and Golden Boy for setting the weight for the Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight at 164.5 pounds instead of at 168.
I don’t think that would have made a lot of difference though because Chavez Jr. had so much weight just to get close to the catchweight, because he had started training camp over 200 pounds. That’s too much weight. Reynoso being happy with Canelo beating a depleted Chavez Jr. indicates how low the bar is for him to be happy. I think for a lot of trainers, they would have put Canelo’s win over Chavez Jr. in perspective and viewed it as a non-victory due to the poor level of his opponent Chavez Jr. This was just another Canelo vs. Alfredo Angulo and James Kirkland fight. Both of those guys were terribly overweight and inactive when they were chosen by Golden Boy to fight Canelo. Chavez Jr. was in the same boat as those guys in being overweight and inactive.
“Golovkin has no defense, [and] does not know how to fight back,” said Reynoso about Golovkin. “It is a fight between a great counter-blower like Saul and a scorer like Golovkin. No doubt Saúl has the talent to stop Gennady, and he has good defense. We are sure that with a great preparation and his talent, we can beat him,” said Reynoso.
Reynoso might have seen Golovkin’s last fight against Danny Jacobs. Golovkin was defending well in that fight. He took a different approach to the Jacobs fight compared to his previous ones. Golovkin was boxing more, trying to score without getting hit. But even in fighting that way, Golovkin received criticism from the boxing public, because the fight ended up closer because it went to decision. Golovkin deviated from his knockout style of fighting in order to box Jacobs.
In the past, Golovkin has usually been willing to put his chin on the line to score knockouts. It’s not easy to get knockouts to please your fans. It requires you to put your chin on the line and push your stamina to the limits by throwing a lot of shots, which put you in danger of gassing. Canelo didn’t want to take the risk himself in his fights against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., Miguel Cotto and Austin Trout. That’s the reason why those fights went the limit. Canelo wasn’t willing to put himself in danger of getting hit or gassing out by throwing a lot of punches.
Canelo is a good counter puncher, but I wouldn’t call him a “great” one like Reynoso is doing. Canelo is only capable of throwing his left hook for counters. Good fighters take his left hook away from him the way Miguel Cotto did, and he’s not the same guy once that punch is taken away. Canelo’s main problem is he has short arms and he’s terribly short for a middleweight. He’s listed at 5’9”, but he’s clearly only 5’8”, and he’s going to be giving away close to 4 inches in height to Golovkin. I think we’re going to see Golovkin jab Canelo from the outside the way that Erislandy Lara and Floyd Mayweather Jr. both did.
Canelo hasn’t proven yet that he can do anything with a fighter that jabs him. Canelo beat Lara by landing a handful of punches in the fight. When I say handful, I mean a tiny handful of maybe 5 punches, because Canelo only connected on 31 head shots in the entire fight. The judges gave Canelo the decision over Lara based on a small number of body shots. Most of the time, Lara was controlling the rounds with his jab. Golovkin will need to make sure that he throws power shots too, because I don’t think the judges are going to give him many rounds if all he’s going to do is throw jabs, which is what he was doing much of the time in his fight with Danny Jacobs on March 18 earlier this year.
“We want to go with Gennady Golovkin and if we do well, we would like to do a third fight in December,” said Reynoso. “We want Canelo to be active this year and we can get into everything to 2018 if we do well.”
It’s nice that Canelo wants to fight in December as well after facing Golovkin in September. It could mean a rematch between Canelo and Golovkin in December, although I tend to doubt it. Miguel is very likely going to be Canelo’s opponent in December no matter what happens in the Golovkin fight in September. Canelo’s fights in 2018 are fairly predictable. Golden Boy is almost surely going to match Canelo against David Lemieux and Billy Joe Saunders in 2018.
Those are flawed fighters that are beatable. I do not see Golden Boy putting Canelo back in with Golovkin in 2018 if he loses to him in September of this year. My prediction is Canelo will NOT fight Jermall Charlo or Danny Jacobs next year. Jacobs and Charlo are logical choices for Canelo to fight if he gets past Golovkin, but I don’t see that happening. Jacobs and Charlo will be put on ignore and not matched against Canelo in my opinion. It’s not that they’re better than Golovkin. It’s more because they’re almost as dangerous as him, and they’re bad match-ups for the 26-year-old Canelo.
Reynoso does a lot of talking about Canelo, but he has not doing anything in the past to show that he deserves to be praised as much as he is by his trainer. Reynoso should give a more accurate picture of Canelo by pointing out his failures against Erislandy Lara and Floyd Mayweather Jr., as well as his thin resume in terms of quality wins over prime fighters. Let’s be serious, Canelo never beat the best when he was fighting at 154. I don’t count Canelo’s win over Lara as being a win. I think he lost that fight. Canelo didn’t fight the Charlo brothers, Demetrius Andrade, and he never gave Lara a rematch after beating him controversially.
I get the feeling that Golovkin will need a knockout against Canelo for him to win. I hate to see a fight in such and black and white terms, but II believe that to be the case with the Canelo-Golovkin match-up. I don’t see Golovkin getting a decision even if he knocks Canelo down 5 times. I don’t think the judges are going to give the win to Golovkin. I hope I’m wrong, because it would be another black eye for boxing to have Canelo beat Golovkin by a controversial decision. The fans just had to sit through a terrible mismatch between a weight drained Chavez Jr. and Canelo last Saturday night in Las Vegas.
Golden Boy obviously did their homework sell in selecting this version of Chavez Jr. to fight Canelo instead of matching him against someone good. But for Reynoso to talk up the Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight, as if Canelo had actually accomplished something by beating the depleted looking Chavez Jr, it’s disappointing. Chavez Jr. looked half stunned even before he walked into the ring. Chavez Jr. looked like he needed a good meal. He was so starved looking. It must have taken everything out of Chavez Jr. to drop enough weight to get down to the 164.5 pound catchweight for the fight.
