By Sean Jones: Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin (37-0-1, 33 KOs) agrees with the comment Saul ‘Canelo” Alvarez (49-1-2, 34 KOs) made on Monday in saying that they won’t need the judges for their May 5th rematch. The fight was announced earlier today by Golden Boy Promotions for HBO pay-per-view.
Golovkin knows more than anybody that he cannot let the second fight with the 27-year-old Mexican star Canelo go to the scorecards again. After the unpleasant experience he had in his last fight with Canelo, Golovkin has lost faith in the scoring by the judges, and he now wants to make sure that they don’t get the opportunity to rip away another well-deserved victory from him like they did on September 16, 2016.
You’re right. This time we won’t need the judges. #CaneloGGG2 pic.twitter.com/h5Hcsh2Evo
— Gennady Golovkin (@GGGBoxing) January 29, 2018
Golovkin needs to go on the attack mode from round 1 in the rematch for him to try and knock Canelo out. Golovkin can’t wait until the 3rd round before he starts pressing, because he gave away 2 precious rounds the last time he fought Canelo.
Here is what Golovkin must do to beat Canelo:
• Stay close to Canelo. Golovkin needs to stay right on top of Canelo like he did with Kell Brook to prevent him from moving away from him along the ropes. Canelo has short legs, and he doesn’t move quickly around the ring. Canelo is not a good mover. The only reason he was able to get away from Golovkin last time they fought was because he was too far away on the outside
• Don’t waste time jabbing Canelo. Golovkin must go after Canelo with power shots, not jabs
• Don’t let Canelo rest. Golovkin allowed Canelo to rest along the ropes by throwing jabs at him instead of unloading power shots. There’s an enormous difference in defending against Jabs than from defending from power shots. Canelo will get tired a lot faster if Golovkin is taking him with his power shots for 3 minutes of each round instead of jabbing him
The venue is still being hashed out by the 2 promoters – Golden Boy and K2 Promotions – and it should be decided in the coming weeks. It’s down to Madison Square Garden in New York or the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. The city of Las Vegas is where Canelo and Golden Boy want the rematch to take place. It’s the location that Golovkin wants it. For him, he sees the T-Mobile as a place where he was given a bad deal last September in fighting to a 12 round draw. The decision was unpopular one, and that’s largely why the fighters Canelo & Golovkin are facing each other for a second time. For that reason and also because of the huge amount of money that both fighters will be making from the likely high number of pay-per-view buys generated on HBO PPV, as well as the ticket sales for wherever the fight takes place.
“I am ready to battle Canelo again and am happy he took this fight again,” said Golovkin in talking about the news of his rematch with Canelo Alvarez. “This is the fight the world wants. This is the fight boxing deserves. I didn’t agree with some of the judges’ decisions in the first fight. This time there will be no doubt. I am leaving the ring as THE middleweight champion of the world.”
The world wants to see the second fight between Canelo and Golovkin, but I get feeling that the interest in the second fight isn’t as high as it was for the first fight. There are 2 reasons for that and they are as follows:
• Fans have lost confidence in the judging. For a lot of the boxing fans, they don’t believe Golovkin will be given a fair shake if the fight goes to the scorecards. They think that Golovkin will be robbed once again like last time he fought Canelo. These fans see Canelo as being so important to the business of boxing that he won’t be given defeats by the judges. These fans believe that Golovkin has to knock Canelo out in order to win. It’s a comparable situation to the Andre Ward vs. Sergey Kovalev 2 rematch. A lot of fans felt Kovalev was robbed in his first fight with Ward in November 2016. The fight was also boring to watch due to Ward’s clinching and mauling. The rematch between Kovalev and Ward ended up doing fewer pay-per-view numbers on HBO, and the only rationale I can see for that happening is many boxing fans believed that Kovalev would be robbed again. The controversial decision in the previous Canelo and GGG fight will likely hurt the PPV numbers in the second fight. I think for a lot of boxing fans, they’ll not put their hard-earned money on paying to see the fight due to them not believing that it will be judged fairly by he appointed set of judges that are picked out
• Canelo’s constant movement from the previous GGG fight. Canelo moved a lot in the Golovkin fight last September. After promising a war, like Canelo promised in his fight before that against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., he instead got on his bike and ran around the ring and failed to engage with Golovkin. It doesn’t help that Canelo has now been in 2 consecutive dull performances against Golovkin and Chavez Jr. It was VERY boring to watch Canelo run from Golovkin for 12 rounds. The fans are already talking about Canelo likely getting on his bike and running from Golovkin to avoid being forced to fight for a full 3 minutes of each round. Canelo simply can’t fight hard for a full 3 minutes. His body doesn’t let him do it because he lacks the conditioning to fight hard like Golovkin. Canelo needs to build up his heart muscle. He spends too much time working out, but he doesn’t do enough running and biking obviously to increase his conditioning to fight hard. Canelo has a lot of mismatches in recent years against the likes of Chavez Jr., Amir Khan, James Kirkland, Liam Smith and Alfredo Angulo. The only good fighters Canelo has fought since 2013 were Golovkin, Erislandy Lara, Austin Trout and Floyd Mayweather Jr. All 3 of those guys deserved wins over him. Only 1 of them – Mayweather – was given a victory over Canelo. The other 2 were arguably robbed in the minds of a lot of boxing fans.
“Canelo vs. Golovkin 2 will be boxing’s biggest and best event of 2018 as these two elite fighters once again go head-to-head to determine who is the best middleweight in the world,” De La Hoya. “I expect we will see even more fireworks in the rematch as both fighters know there more is at stake now than before.”
I strongly disagree with De La Hoya about the Canelo-Golovkin fight being one to prove who the best fighter in the middleweight division is. Without Daniel Jacobs, Billy Joe Saunders, Jermall Charlo and Sergiy Derevyanchenko getting their chance against these guys, you can’t say Canelo vs. Golovkin is a fight that will show who the #1 fighter is in the world at middleweight. The only thing Canelo vs. Golovkin will show is who the better fighter is between those 2 fighters, and even then, it will come down to how the fight ends up. If we see another controversial decision like last time, then you can’t say the fight proved anything other than there are some terrible judges in the sport of boxing.