By Jim Dower: Saul Canelo Alvarez (49-1-2, 34 KOs) was supposed to have been working on his cardio and presumably thinning down for his rematch against IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin (37-0-1, 33 KOs) on May 5, but he’s looking as big as he was before. Canelo looks fully bulked up in the training video, almost like a light heavyweight.
There’s 7 ½ weeks to go before the May 5th Canelo-GGG rematch. Canelo will hopefully take off some of the bulk because he looks slow and too big. The hand speed seems to have disappeared for Canelo. That could due to him bulking up since his controversial 12 round draw against Golovkin on September 16.
Canelo has had 6 months to bulk up since the GGG fight, and it looks like he’s done a good job of packing on the pounds. Golovkin might be the smaller man again when he gets inside the ring with the bulked up Canelo. All this bulk that Canelo has put on since moving up in weight from 154 doesn’t seem to have helped him. He still should have lost his last fight against Golovkin, and the weight didn’t improve his performance any.
.@Canelo in training camp with trainer Eddy Reynoso @CANELOTEAM for #CaneloGGG2 #May5 @HBOboxing PPV. #TeamCanelo 👊🏼 pic.twitter.com/awOi6IHqHs
— Golden Boy Boxing (@GoldenBoyBoxing) March 14, 2018
Canelo would have been better off focusing on speed rather than bulk. If Canelo got down to 165 pounds, he would be much faster and he could use the speed to box GGG. The bulked up Canelo looks like he’s betting on his size to help him beat Golovkin rather than speed.
Canelo tested positive for clenbuterol in VADA’s testing for performance enhancing drugs last February. The explanation for the positive test is Canelo ate tainted meat. We’re still waiting for the Nevada State Athletic Commission to complete their investigation of the tainted meat. Canelo tested positive just when he was starting his training camp. The levels of clenbuterol were low in Canelo’s system. That’s why some people are saying that it indicates that Canelo ate tainted meat. The flip-side argument that other people are making is that Canelo’s low levels of clenbuterol means he was cycling downward to get off the drug to start training camp, because that’s when testing by VADA begins rather than year round. Promoter Eddie Hearn says that nowadays the drug cheats use PEDs 16 weeks before the fight. They cycle and get the size and power they want for the fight 16 weeks out, and then they start tapering off the drug and are clean by the time they begin training 8 weeks before the fight. So, the drug cheats have the benefit of the size and power they got from the drugs they used 16 weeks out. That’s why Hearn feels that for VADA to catch the drug cheats and stop the cheating by them, they tested from 16 weeks, because by the time the testing is started at week 8, they’ve already completed their cycle of PEDs. Some drug cheats still get caught though with low levels of the drugs still in their system due to them not cycling down from the drugs in time for the testing by VADA.
“He knows what he has to do,” De La Hoya said of Canelo. “He knows what he can do. I have a feeling that Canelo will be more aggressive. I asked Canelo after the fight if Golovkin hits hard and he was like, ‘No, he doesn’t.’
Oscar De La Hoya says Canelo told him that Golovkin does hit hard. If that’s true, then we should see a good fight on May 5th. Canelo won’t need to move so much if Golovkin doesn’t have punching power as he says. Canelo didn’t move against other fighters that didn’t have power. He stood right in front of Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., Amir Khan, Alfredo Angulo and Liam Smith. Canelo should be able to do the same thing with Triple G if he’s serious about him not hitting hard.
”I felt like a winner on the fight night, but I thank God that we can have a second one to show ourselves and everyone else who’s the best,” Canelo said about his September 16th fight with Golovkin last year. ”Both of us want to win and convince everyone who’s the best. I feel like I wonder the first fight,” Canelo said.
The rematch will prove who the better fighter is between Canelo and Golovkin, as long as the judges score it in a logical manner this time. The rematch won’t prove anything if the judges turn in a set of scores that don’t make sense to the boxing public. The positive drug test for Canelo might make it harder for him to win a decision. Hopefully the judges don’t show a bias against Canelo for testing positive for a PED. You never know what goes through the mind of a judge when it comes to scoring a fight.
”The only thing Triple G can do is prepare himself for a knockout win,” former two division world champion Jessie Vargas said to Fighthype in giving his analysis of the Canelo-GGG rematch. ”I honestly do think so [that Golovkin needs a knockout to win against Canelo], because who can put up a better performance from the last fight to the next fight? I think it would be Canelo. If Triple G can aim his shots correctly, it can be done [a knockout win over Canelo],” Vargas said.
What Vargas is saying about Golovkin needing a knockout is the same thing that a lot of boxing fans have been talking about since their first fight last September. The judges will be fair. They’re not going to give the win to Canelo just because he’s popular and means so much for the city of Las Vegas. With the spotlight being on the judges’ scoring for the May 5th rematch, they’re not going to want to put themselves in the hot seat by giving Canelo a score that he doesn’t deserve like we saw in the first fight from the judges that scored it 10 rounds to 2 in Canelo’s favor and 6 rounds to 6. Some boxing fans think the 6-6 score is a fine one, but when you factor in that the judge that turned that score in gave the 7th round to Canelo, it doesn’t make sense. That was the most one-sided round of the fight for Golovkin. If the judge had picked another round to give to Canelo instead of the 7th, it wouldn’t have looked as bad.
”He’s younger,” Vargas said of Canelo. ”You can’t say he’s bigger, because the natural middleweight is Triple G. That’s the reason why I have to give the power advantage to Triple G. But Canelo has always proved a lot of people wrong, including myself, and he’s always come up to the occasion and looked for a way to come up with the victory. We’ll see how he’s able to do on May 5th,” Vargas said.
Canelo will likely be bigger than Golovkin again in the rematch, but not more powerful. Canelo has put on muscle. Punching power is a natural thing that doesn’t change much by adding muscle size. It’s unclear whether PEDs would help a fighters’ punching power or not. As long as Canelo is clean and not testing positive for PEDs during the fight, then you can’t say that his power will be increased for the rematch.
”I don’t see him winning by a knockout, but maybe by a decision,” Vargas said of Canelo. ”I can see that. Triple G, the only way I see him winning is by knockout. We’ll find out. He was able to land some clean shots on Canelo. Canelo says they didn’t hurt him, but those shots seemed vicious. I think he did feel them, but they didn’t take him down. He had that chin,” Vargas said.
The last thing Golovkin needs to do is shoot for a one-punch knockout. That’s not going to work because Canelo moves his head so much, and he’s good at rolling away from shots. It’s not that Canelo has great punch resistance. The reason he can take punches is because he rolls with them, and his opponents often decrease their power so they can improve their accuracy with their shots. Canelo uses so much upper body movement, it makes it hard to hit him to the head. He moves and then he throws a power shot from the angle that he’s leaning to. Golovkin should focus on throwing more body shots, and focus on combinations. Staying close to Canelo is also very important. Golovkin will never be able to cut off the ring on Canelo if he fights him on the outside.
Golovkin needs to stop hesitating so much and let his shots go. In the previous fight against Canelo, Golovkin was hesitating and not throwing the punches that he needed to. Canelo wasn’t hesitating. He wasn’t cautious about throwing his punches. Golovkin will need to attack more, and stop thinking so much before he lets his hands go. Golovkin needs to ignore Canelo when he shakes his head to let him know that his punches didn’t bother him. Golovkin wasn’t attacking Canelo when he would bluff him. That should have been a cue for Golovkin to go on the attack, but he seemed like he was a little intimidated at times by this bluffing gesture by Canelo.