By Jeff Aranow: Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya is already talking about a trilogy fight between middleweights Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin and Saul Canelo Alvarez no matter happens in their May 5th rematch. There isn’t a rematch clause for the Canelo-Golovkin 2 fight, but De La Hoya sees that as a non-issue preventing them from facing each other in a third fight.
According to De La Hoya, the loser of the Canelo s. Golovkin 2 fight will want to avenge their loss, so it creates a need for a third fight between them. De La Hoya doesn’t say when the third Canelo vs. Triple G fight will take place, but it’s quite possible that boing fans will see it this September on the Mexican Independence Day holiday weekend. That’s when Canelo plans on fighting after his May 5th rematch with Golovkin.
By now, De La Hoya has surveyed the middleweight landscape for Canelo and realized that aren’t any other big names out there for him to fight other Golovkin. But there are plenty of d potentially difficult fighters in the 160 lb. division that could deal Canelo defeats and ruin his money-making career for Golden Boy. Canelo’s future looks murky after he’s done with his fights with Golovkin.
Canelo would need to prove that he can beat the larger middleweights like Jermall Charlo, Daniel Jacobs, and Billy Joe Saunders There’s also the very tough Sergiy Derevyanchenko, who isn’t much taller than Canelo at only 5’9”, but he’s a guy with a lot talent and power. It’s not a given that the 27-year-old Canelo will get past Derevyanchenko.
“It has to, there’s no doubt about it,” De La Hoya said to the desertsun.com about a third Canelo vs. Golovkin fight. “The first one was a draw, whomever wins the next one, the loser is going to want to get revenge. So, this obviously calls for a trilogy, and that’s exactly what the fight fans deserve,” De La Hoya said.
As long as there is still interest from the boxing public in watching Canelo and Golovkin fight each other, Golden Boy Promotions might as well put them in with each other for a third and maybe even a fourth fight. Whether there’s a third fight or not may depend on how the second one turns out in terms of the judging. If there’s another horrendous controversial decision turned in by the judges for the Canelo-Golovkin fight, then I don’t see there being enough interest from the fans to see a third fight.
It would be best for the two fighters to walk away and go in a different direction rather than continue to fight each other with the judges ruining the fights each time, and it hurting the sport. Canelo seems to do best when he’s fighting someone that he can totally dominate. When Canelo doesn’t face easy marks in which he has a clear advantage, he finds himself in fights in which the scoring is controversial like in his contests with Gennady Golovkin, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara. Those were all fights that had scoring that seemed out of touch with what took place during the contests.
“The fight fans will be able to witness again what I believe will be another fight of the year,” De La Hoya said.
I’m not sure what De La Hoya is talking about when he says the boxing fans will see “another fight of the year.” The previous Canelo vs. Golovkin fight was not a particularly exciting fight. Canelo was running around the ring, looking tired against the ropes, and doing very little in each other than throwing a few pot shots. Canelo looked like he didn’t have the conditioning needed for him to fight more than one-third of each round. Golovkin only jabbed and didn’t throw hardly any power punches or body shots. It wasn’t a really exciting fight for me. It was a letdown, a disappointment, especially the final results with the bizarre scoring by 2 of the judges [Adelaide Byrd and Don Trella].
I had hoped Canelo and Golovkin 1 was going to be fight filled with fireworks, but it turned out to be anything but that. It was a lot of jabs from GGG, and a lot of running and resting by Canelo. Fight of the year, it was not. Both fighters are now saying that the judges won’t have a say so in the outcome of their second fight on May 5, but we’ll have to see about that. Canelo and Golovkin were so locked into their fighting styles last September; it’s hard to see either of them changing much in the rematch. Golovkin doesn’t want to be countered, and he has no confidence that he can exist on the inside against Canelo. I don’t Golovkin getting in close and fighting Canelo on the inside in the rematch.
Canelo isn’t going to come after Golovkin and fight him in the center of the ring for 12 rounds. Canelo isn’t going to throw a lot of punches. He doesn’t have a good enough engine to throw a lot of shots without tiring and ending up a sitting duck for GGG to blast away at with his jabs. I wish I could say Golovkin will do more than jab this time around, but I don’t think he will. Golovkin’s last 2 fights against Canelo and Danny Jacobs has seen him taking no chances and just standing and jabbing. The last time the boxing public saw the old Golovkin was against Kell Brook in 2016. Since then, Golovkin has been transformed into a boring, safety first fighter that stands on the outside and jabs for 12 rounds. If Golovkin fights like that in the rematch with Canelo, I don’t see how he can win. Canelo will steal the rounds by landing a couple of hard shots, and the judges will be more impressed with those 2 punches than they will 50 hard jabs from Golovkin that snap Canelo’s head back. Golovkin seems pretty smart. Hopefully he figures out that he’ll never beat a popular fighter like Caneo just jabbing.