By Dan Ambrose: Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (49-1-2, 34 KOs) says he’ll sit out the rest of 2017 following his hard-fought 12 round draw against IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (37-0-1, 33 KOs) last Saturday night on HBO PPV at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Canelo says he’ll be back inside the ring in May of 2018 against an opponent still to be determined. The likely opponent for the 27-year-old Alvarez in May of next year is Triple G, who the boxing world overwhelmingly thought won the fight against the Golden Boy star last Saturday night. 2 of the judges unquestionably marred the Canelo-Golovkin by scoring it 118-110 for Canelo and 114-114. The third judge scored it narrowly for Golovkin 115-113.
The overall view from the boxing public is Golovkin won 116-112, which comes out to 8 rounds to 4. That’s what HBO’s unofficial scorer Harold Lederman scored it. He had it a fairly one-sided fight with GGG winning the fight based on him showing that he wanted it more than Canelo. When one fighter is putting out more effort than the other fighter, which was the case last Saturday night with Triple G outworking Canelo, it makes it very easy to score it. In this case, 2 of the judges came out with some oddball scores that the boxing world didn’t agree with.
Canelo will be fighting in May and September. Canelo won’t be fighting 3 times next year like he’d been trying to do in the past.
It makes sense for Canelo to limit the amount of times he fights per year, as he’s going to get quickly worn down if he competes 3 times a year against good opposition. Gone are the days where Canelo would be fed an easy opponent by his promoters at Golden Boy for him to blast out at 154 or 155. Now that Canelo has moved up to 160, he’s going to get hit a lot more if he continues to face quality opposition moving forward.
“I will rest now for the remainder of the year and be back next year in May or September. If people want a rematch we will do it but one thing is for sure. This is my era,” said Canelo.
If this is Canelo’s era, as he says, it doesn’t say much about boxing. If a flawed middleweight with poor stamina like Canelo is the top guy in the sport, then it reflects badly on boxing. Canelo was only capable of fighting hard in the opening seconds of each round before he’d tire and start running from GGG. Canelo’s mind is willing, but his flesh is weak. He just does have the conditioning to fight hard for a full round.
It’s good that Canelo will be taking a long break after the Golovkin fight. Canelo soaked up a lot of punishment in the fight despite making Golovkin miss frequently with his right hand. Canelo couldn’t avoid Golovkin’s jabs and his left hook. Those punches were landing throughout the contest. It was lucky for Canelo that Golovkin didn’t target Canelo’s midsection. He wouldn’t have missed with his punches if he threw more to the body. Daniel Jacobs was surprised that Triple G didn’t throw to the body of Canelo, because he felt that would have been the wise thing for him to do in order to wear the 27-year-old Mexican star down.
“I don’t think it disappointed,” said Kellerman to ESPN’s First Take in remarking on the Alvarez vs. Golovkin fight. “They were both landing bombs. Everyone is talking about that terrible scorecard, it was 118-110 Canelo, and it was not that. That judge was saying 10 rounds to 2 to Canelo, 2 rounds to Triple G. That’s not a possible scorecard. It’s terrible, but they’re allowing that to mar the fight. The fact of the matter is my scorecard, from 6 rounds to 6 or 8 rounds to 4 to Triple G, like if you had it 6-6, 7-5 or 8-4 for Triple G, those are all reasonable ranges and considering that 1 judge had it even and 1 judge had it for Triple G, it would have been 6-6, which would have been reasonable. It would have been a majority draw anyway. So, her scorecard was still outrageous, but it didn’t necessarily change the outcome of the fight,” said Kellerman.
The judge that scored the fight for Canelo 10 rounds to 2 made it look to some that he was being protected to keep his popularity high. A loss for Canelo to Golovkin would have impacted his popularity and likely his earning power for future fights. A defeat for Canelo would have made a rematch between him and Golovkin unnecessary. Golovkin showed that he was the better fighter with his superior conditioning, work rate and the way that he wanted it more.
If the judges had scored the fight correctly, Golovkin would have won the fight, and there wouldn’t be any need for a second fight. A rematch would destroy Canelo’s career if he lost it. But with the judges scoring it a draw, it rendered the first fight as meaningless for the record books. It’s as if the fight never took place. That way if Canelo loses to Golovkin in the second fight in 2018, it won’t be too bad. Where it could hurt Canelo is if the judges once again score the fight in a strange way by either giving him a controversial win or another draw that he doesn’t arguably deserve. When a fighter like Canelo has the judges bailing him out over and over again, it’s not good news for his career.
Canelo has now been involved in 3 controversial fights in his career against Austin Trout, Erislandy Lara and Golovkin. All three of those fights could have and probably should have been defeats. Would Canelo be as popular now if he’d lost to all of those guys? I don’t think he would. Canelo probably wouldn’t be a PPV attraction. He’d be this era’s version of Miguel Cotto, a fighter who does well against certain guys, but he fails when he faces taller fighters or guys that outweigh him. Canelo is like a bigger version of Cotto, but with far worse stamina. Cotto at least could fight hard for a full 3 minute round. Canelo is only able to fight hard for the first minute, and he then tires out and gets worked over on the ropes. That’s what we saw last Saturday, and that’s what we saw in Canelo’s fights against Trout and Lara.
”Canelo fought the excellent fight to the point where he was the smaller guy, he was the underdog, but he was able to box well enough in spurts and turn it on when he needed to,” said Kellerman. ”You could have given the first 3 rounds to Canelo or 2 out of 3. You could have given the last 2 rounds or 2 out of 3 to Canelo. It was perfectly reasonable for people to say I gave the first and the last 3 to Canelo and had a draw,” said Kellerman.
Kellerman is saying that it’s perfectly reasonable for the boxing fans to have scored the Canelo vs. GGG fight a draw. The fact is, it’s not perfectly reasonable, as that’s not what they’re doing. Kelleman is talking about the Canelo-Golovkin fight as if it took place in a parallel universe, where things are backwards and upside down from what took place in this universe. If losers meant that they deserved to be given draws in another universe, then that would be fine for that place, but in this universe, you win fights in a logical way by outworking your opponents, especially when they’re exhausted and running from you.
The boxing pubic are NOT accepting the draw that the judges gave to Canelo. I’m not sure that Kellerman is keeping track of the reaction from the fans or not. He probably needs to if he’s going to be talking about the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight. If Kellerman had opened up his eyes and ears, he would have observed by now that the boxing public is furious at the draw and they’re not just angry due to one judge scoring it 118-110 for Canelo. The fans are hopping mad because they saw Golovkin winning the fight. They didn’t see it as a draw. They saw that as a robbery result. It probably helps HBO to have Canelo being a star for them, and Kellerman is one of HBO’s boxing analysts.
“I did not have Canelo winning the fight,” said Stephen A. Smith to ESPN’s First Take. “I had him losing it. I had Triple G winning the fight 115-113. I wouldn’t have minded the score 114-113. The decision was bad. It was not a draw. It was a clear winner. It should have been Triple G, but I know those kinds of things can happen, which unfortunately is why the UFC has elevated in popularity, because we got somebody in Dana White controlling the sport to make sure you get the fights you want to see. You don’t end up having this kind of stuff happening,” said Smith.
Stephen A. Smith was giving Canelo the benefit of the doubt in having him lose by a narrow 115-113 score instead of the 116-112 score that a lot of the fans saw him getting beaten by. I do agree with Smith about White doing a better job putting on the fights the fans want to see in the UFC.
Unfortunately, in boxing, the fights that the fans want to see aren’t getting made on a frequent enough basis to keep the sport way ahead of the UFC. You have too many promoters protecting their fighters by putting them in mismatches in order to keep them popular. The promoters are protecting their fighters. Look at Canelo as an example of that. He’s gone through 12 years as a pro, and he’s only had 5 good opponents during all that time in his fights against Golovkin, Miguel Cotto, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Erislandy Lara and Austin Trout. Those are good fighters, but Canelo hasn’t fought a ton of other good fighters like the Charlos, Demetrius Andrade, Jarrett Hurd, Daniel Jacobs, Erickson Lubin, David Lemieux, Tureano Johnson and Sergiy Derevyanchenko. Those fights should have already happened. If Golden Boy hadn’t wasted time having Canelo fight Alfredo Angulo, James Kirkland, Amir Khan and Liam Smith, he could have fought some real quality fighters.
“I thought Triple G won the fight, as Stephen A. did,” said Kellerman. “We have the same score, 7 rounds to 5. If you tell me 8 rounds to 4, Triple G, I’m okay too. A lot of the fans in the Arena were really for Triple G, and I understand that he was certainly the aggressor and seemed to want it a little bit more throughout the fight, although at key moments, Canelo really showed up. Triple G landed most of the effective punches, but Canelo may have landed the most effective punches, like the ones you really remember. Canelo really landed some good shots. So for those who were completely outraged, there was no way you could have it 6 rounds to 6, a lot of the serious press people, who have judged a lot of fights, had it 6 rounds to 6, although I didn’t, I could respect that score,” said Kellerman.
Kellerman doesn’t say who these “serious press people” are who scored it 6 rounds to 6. In looking at the press row scores last Saturday, the journalists were all giving Golovkin the win by 8 rounds to 4 for the most part. You’d have to bring a magnifying glass to find the press people that scored the fight for Canelo. Kellerman needs to take a close look at the scores of the press from last Saturday, because nary a one scored it for Canelo and almost nobody scored it a draw.