By Jim Dower: WBA World featherweight champion Abner Mares says he agrees with Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez when he says he can throw more punches in his rematch with Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin and knockout him out when the two of them fight each other on May 5th on HBO pay-per-view.
Abner says Canelo can throw more punches AND score a knockout of Golovkin. The reason Mares believes is that he feel that he noticed that Golovkin didn’t fight well when he was being forced backwards by Canelo in their September 16th fight last year in Las Vegas. Mares noted that GGG looked uncomfortable when he was being backed up during the fight. Mares believes the 27-year-old Canelo’s youth will play a factor in him beating Golovkin.
“I’m with Canelo when he says he’s going to throw more and how he’s going to knock him out, because he can,” Abner Mares said to Fighthype. ”He can do both. He showed in certain rounds. He pressed. I wouldn’t put it in that he hurt Triple G, but he put him in an uncomfortable position when he was throwing and he was backing him up. Triple G doesn’t know how to fight going backwards. So Canelo has to look at that.”
Canelo couldn’t throw more punches the last time he fought Golovkin because he kept getting tired. If Canelo works on his conditioning, he might be able to throw more shots, but he would need to be able to stay in the pocket and deal with the return fire from Golovkin for 12 rounds. This wouldn’t be like Canelo hitting a punching bag. Golovkin would be hitting him back.
”Triple G needs to be more aggressive. Don’t just wait,” Mares said. ”He was waiting a little too much and vice versa. Canelo was waiting too much and didn’t pressure.”
Golovkin must be more aggressive than last time he fought Alvarez. Golovkin thought he could win a decision against Canelo the way superstar Floyd Mayweather Jr. did, and he found out that the judges weren’t going to let him get away with winning that way. What this means is the only Golovkin is going to beat Canelo is the old fashioned way by attacking him nonstop with power punches and wearing him down until he’s knocked out. It’s a harder way for Golovkin to win, but it might be the only way he can against a popular fighter like Canelo.
”I give the edge to Canelo because of the youth, and the kid is a superstar,” Mares said in leaning towards Canelo to defeat Gennady. ”The kid is a good fighter.”
Canelo is popular, but being a superstar might not be enough. Superstar only means that Canelo has a large fan base. He’s already been shown to have problems against Mayweather, Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara. Canelo is not the kind of talent to win fights like he was doing when he was fighting at 147 and 154. It’s a different story at 160. Canelo isn’t the same fighter at 160 that he was when he was at 154, and was steamrollering everyone. Canelo will need to try and throw more punches, and move less if he wants to beat Golovkin, because it looked like Canelo was trying to get away to from GGG to escape the pressure due to fatigue.
