Gennady Golovkin vs. Canelo Alvarez – Results

By Boxing News - 09/17/2017 - Comments

Image: Gennady Golovkin vs. Canelo Alvarez - Results

By Sean Jones: Teddy Atlas of ESPN went through a full meltdown after watching the Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (49-1-2, 34 KOs) vs. Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (370-1, 33 KOs) fight tonight and seeing it scored as a 12 round draw in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Atlas scored the fight in Golovkin’s favor by 10 rounds to 2 score, which was the same score that one of the judges scored it for Canelo in giving him an 118-110 score. The judge felt Golovkin only won 2 rounds in the entire 12 round fight. The other two judges scored the fight 115-113 for Golovkin and 114-114 even for the Canelo-GGG fight at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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Golovkin out-landed Canelo by 49 punches. Golovkin connected on 218 of 703 shots for a connect percentage of 31, according to CompuBox. Canelo landed 169 of 505 punches for a connect percentage of 33.

The crowd at ringside booed the decision, which could mean one of two things. Either they felt that Canelo should have won or Golovkin. Canelo was loudly booed during the post-fight interview by HBO’s Max Kellerman. That tells you something about what the boxing fans were thinking.

Golovkin was putting constant heat on Canelo from start to the end of the fight. Canelo was moving around the ring, not staying in one place to fight Golovkin.

“Corruption in boxing,” said Atlas to ESPN in talking about the Canelo vs. Golovkin results. “Follow the money. I had 118-110. Let’s knock off 1 point, and make it 117-111. It’s still one guy winning the fight. 1 guy is the ocean. The other guy was the log for most of the fight. The ocean is the one that wins that battle. The ocean moves the log around. The ocean is the champion. The ocean was Golovkin. But not in boxing. Boxing doesn’t honor the things that should be honored. It honors money, control, power,” said Atlas.

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Atlas was really going after the judges. The scoring was strange, given that Golovkin was wearing Canelo down and appearing to get the better of the red-haired Mexican fighter up through the later rounds. Canelo fought well enough to win rounds 10 and 11. Round 12 looked like a Golovkin round, because he outworked Canelo and landed the harder shots.

It was readily apparent from round 1 that the 5’10 ½” Golovkin had too much height and reach for the 5’8 ½” Canelo. Golovkin was able to hit Canelo with jabs all night long, nailing him and not getting hit in return. That was hard to ignore. When you see one fighter with more size jabbing the shorter fighter, it makes sense to give the fight to the bigger guy that is using his size to dominate the action.

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“He fought in spots, but he didn’t fight enough to win,” said Atlas about Canelo. “He fought in spots to survive, spots here and there to keep the ocean from pushing him up on the shore. He’s the log. At the end of the day, he didn’t do enough to win. He survived. He knew that if he survived, if he had spots, anything can happen. This could happen. The judges could take it from there. Again, I don’t give a damn about the promoters out there. I picked the promoters whose on top. I picked their guy to win. I don’t care if their mad and angry. The truth is the truth. That’s the problem with this sport. People will be satisfied to a certain extent, but people will be sickened, and say, ‘I can’t continue to love something that doesn’t love me back,” said Atlas.

Canelo always fights in spots. That’s been his major flaw in his game ever since he turned pro. Canelo gets tired, so he takes breaks against the ropes. Tonight, Canelo took a lot of breaks against the ropes. In fact, most of the fight, Canelo was against the ropes. Canelo came out to the center of the ring when he was rallying in rounds 10 through 12, but he appeared to be well behind by that point in the fight. Even if you wanted to give Canelo the last 3 rounds, he appeared to lose the other rounds, which would have made it 9 rounds to 3 in Golovkin’s favor.

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Canelo was moving a lot in round 3 and 4. He stayed against the ropes, and was getting outworked by Golovkin. Being against the ropes hurt Canelo’s chances to get out of the way of shots, and land his own punches. It’s unclear why Canelo waited until round 10 to start trying to fight in the center of the ring. I think it was a stamina issue hat Canelo had. Canelo was trying, but he didn’t have the conditioning to stay inside the center of the ring.

In round 5, Golovkin hit Canelo with a big right hand to the head. Canelo then shook his head, as if let him know that he wasn’t hurt by the punch. Golovkin continued to hit Canelo, and the Mexican fighter continued to shake his head, as if to let him know that he wasn’t hurt by his punches.

Canelo began to look really tired by the 6th round from the presser that he was dealing with by Golovkin. The boxing fans were really enjoying the fight. Golovkin had a lot of the fans still cheering even when he was nailing Canelo. There were a lot of Canelo fans, but Golovkin got a lot of respect from the boxing fans. In the 6th, Canelo pulled a dirty move when he put Golovkin in a headlock, and then reached around behind his back and hit him in the head. It was a cheap shot that the referee let him get away with. Canelo looked like he was beginning to lose his cool by that point in the fight.

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The draw keeps Golovkin as the IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion. That’s the good news for him. Golovkin doesn’t lose his title and he gets to face canelo again for another big payday.

There will almost surely be a rematch between Canelo and Golovkin at some point in the near future but it might not take place until next year. Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy Promotions will likely match Canelo against Miguel Cotto because he brings in a lot of money on PPV, and this will likely be the last chance Canelo has to fight him before he retires. Canelo and Golovkin will likely meet up on Cinco de Mayo next May in 2018 in a rematch in Las Vegas.

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