Arum: GGG won easily 8-4

By Boxing News - 09/19/2017 - Comments

Image: Arum: GGG won easily 8-4

By Sean Jones: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum saw last weekend’s fight between unbeaten IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (37-0-1, 33 KOs) and Golden Boy Promotions flagship fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (49-1-2, 34 KOs) and in his opinion, Triple G won the fight easily 8 rounds to 4.

Arum doesn’t understand what the judge Don Trella was thinking in scoring round 7 for Canelo. That was one of the most one-sided rounds in the fight in favor of Golovkin. If not for Trella giving the 7th to Canelo, Golovkin would have won the fight. Trella scored the fight 114-114 in seeing it as a draw. Most of the focus after the fight had ended was on the 118-110 score rather than the 114-114 score. Both judges saw the fight in an odd way in giving Canelo rounds in which he appeared to lose.

The sad thing is Golovkin came into the fight with many boxing fans believing he would need a knockout in order to beat the popular Canelo. A lot of the fans saw there being no way that the judges would give Golovkin a decision victory over Canelo no matter what he did in the fight. The controversial decision in the fight seemed to confirm the opinions of those skeptical boxing fans that Golovkin never had a chance of winning a decision against Canelo.

”GGG won the fight EASY! I had it 8-4. And what the hell was (judge Don) Trella watching in the 7th round,” said Bob Arum.

It’s interesting that Arum didn’t mention the 118-110 score in favor of Canelo that judge Adalaide Byrd turned in for the fight. That was an even more controversial score than the 114-114 score that Trella turned in for the fight. For some reason, Byrd saw Canelo winning 10 rounds to 2.

As tired as Canelo was after round 3, you’d be hard-pressed to see another round in which you could say he conclusively won it. The reason for that is because Canelo would only fight the first 30 to 45 seconds of each round from round 4-12. The rest of the round, Canelo would take it off, resting from having exerted energy in the opening 30 to 45 seconds. To say that Canelo showed MAJOR stamina issues in the fight was putting it lightly. Canelo fought like a guy that didn’t train correctly.

You can blame that on Canelo’s 2 long-time trainers, the Reynosos. They should have worked on his conditioning ages ago, as he’s been gassing out in fights as long as I can remember. I’m not sure if that’s something that can be fixed. Some fighters just don’t have good cardiovascular systems. They’re not made to fight hard for 3 minutes of each round. Canelo should think about bringing in a third trainer that can help him with his stamina issues, because he’s not going to keep getting controversial decisions the way he’s been getting in the last 4 years if he doesn’t improve his stamina.

Canelo should have lost to Golovkin, Erislandy Lara and Austin Trout. All three of those fighters beat him, but we’re given decisions in my opinion. Canelo can’t have an entire career based on winning controversial decisions whenever faces good opposition. The only reason Canelo’s stamina issues haven’t been highlighted as much is because Golden Boy Promotions has put him in with so many over-the-hill or guys that were never good to begin with. Canelo can’t keep fighting those type of fighters if he wants to stay a PPV guy.

22,358 boxing fans turned out to watch the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight last Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Golovkin, 35, was fighting for Canelo’s Ring Magazine middleweight title, which he’s had since beating Miguel Cotto in 2015. Canelo was allowed to keep the Ring title even after he vacated his WBC middleweight title in 2016, when ordered by the World Boxing Council to defend it against Golovkin. For his part, Golovkin defended his IBF and WBA titles last Saturday night against Canelo. The WBC title wasn’t on the line for the fight due to Canelo not wanting to fight for the belt. Canelo didn’t have to have his weight checked on the morning of the fight by the International Boxing Federation because there were multiple titles on the line for the fight.

Golovkin wanted a “true fight” but Canelo had other ideas. He wanted to move around the ring, and throw shoeshine combinations to win the rounds. Most of the shoeshine punches Canelo threw missed. It’s unclear whether Byrd and Trella scored the missed punches from Canelo as having landed, since that’s the only explanation that one could see why they both gave him so many rounds. Canelo wasn’t landing his shots, and he was looking so incredibly tired until the 10th. Canelo was getting hit by Golovkin’s jab, and he was not fighting hard after the 1 minute mark of each round.

Not surprisingly, after the fight, Canelo’s promters Bernard Hopkins and Oscar De La Hoya both said they saw Canelo winning 7 rounds to 5. Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler said that he saw Golovkin winning 8 rounds to 4, which was the same amount of rounds that HBO’s unofficial scorer Harold Lederman saw the fight.

If Golovkin doesn’t want to end up dealing with more controversy in the rematch, he needs to put in a better effort to knockout Canelo. I can easily see Golovkin ending up getting robbed in a second fight as well if he doesn’t make sure he takes the judges out of the equation against Canelo.