By Rob Blakeman: Don’t blame Saul Canelo Alvarez for the bad decision in his fight against Gennady “GGG” Golovkin last Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada! As the post fight interviews were taking place booing and jeering could be heard from fans in the auditorium whenever Alvarez spoke. He had just fought the fight of his life-literally.
Canelo probably thought he had won because he is one of only a couple of people who had been the distance with this wrecking ball that is GGG and moreover he had hit him back quite often. Hopefully he’ll watch the tape later and realize that he lost by a country mile and review his thoughts but De La Hoya and the others will never let him say that he thought that on reflection he had lost by at least 8 rounds to 4 which is what the HBO experts had scored it including Harold Letterman and along with most of us at home did-so don’t expect him to. What was so depressing was that Canelo-who is not responsible for the judging was being booed. He was being booed because he lost and we all know he lost but in this sick social media infected society we hate losers and they should be punished and squashed and humiliated in front of the World. Alvarez doesn’t deserve that. Golovkin equally didn’t deserve that blatant rip off to happen to him either but you know what? He knew it was a strong possibility when he took the fight.
I have been training Professional fighters for almost 20 years and I have always started out by telling them boxing is notoriously a dirty business and very political and by political I mean it’s fixed. Local boxing, regional, national, amateur and professional boxing is fixed-not all of it but quite a bit. Sponsors and special interest groups like their man to win and so he’ll probably win. “He’s wearing our brand name so he has to win”. I have been to so many pre-show parties where this kind of thing is hinted at or alluded to in the form of jokes and banter and so forth but it’s true. So I tell the fighters, knowing that sports are corrupt if you still want to proceed with your career I’ll support you-but don’t let me hear you complain later about how you got robbed. If you fight long enough you’ll probably win some fights that you should have lost and you’ll definitely lose some that you should have won.
This is probably why the gentleman-like Golovkin was so magnanimous in defeat. I know it was a draw but to him, he right fully feels his victory was robbed from him. But he also knows the secret about the two magic things about success in life. They are as follows; you can achieve anything in life that you want provided that you understand the following. Number one, make it your sole desire, your true passion, train for it, live it, breathe it, eat it, sleep it. Secondly, be prepared to pay the price. Now the price isn’t just all the time away your family that you sacrifice in training camps and all the dieting and promotional tours and so forth no, that’s not it at all. The price that you pay is that once you want the really BIG fights. The really BIG money fights you have to get mixed up with all of those dodgy promoters and people behind the scenes of boxing. In other words you have to get in the sewer and when you get in the sewer you’ll get dirty. That’s the price Golovkin paid today. We all paid the price today with another terrible blow to the integrity of this sport we love.
And by the way, Kudos to boxing news if they publish this.