(Photo credit: Abel Sanchez) By Dan Ambrose: Abel Sanchez, the trainer for unbeaten WBA Super World middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (31-0, 28 KOs) knocking out both WBC champ Miguel Cotto and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez if he winds up facing one or both of them in the near future.
Right now, there’s a possibility that the winner of Cotto’s next fight will opt to vacate the WBC middleweight title rather than face Golovkin and possibly get annihilated. Sanchez suspects that the Cotto-Canelo winner may end up vacating the title rather than risking their hide against Golovkin.
Sanchez says that Canelo has shown no interest in wanting to fight Golovkin in the past. As for Canelo, Sanchez sees it coming down to Canelo’s promoter Oscar Dela Hoya of Golden Boy Promotions. If De La Hoya doesn’t feel that the 24-year-old Canelo is ready to face Golovkin, then that fight probably won’t happen unless Canelo is willing to overrule De La Hoya.
“Cotto doesn’t go five rounds with Golovkin,” Sanchez said. “Canelo doesn’t go eight. At 160 pounds, there’s no one that’s going to go 12 rounds with him. Canelo will take the fight, but then you have Oscar [De La Hoya] saying he’ll be ready in a couple of years…The WBC has mandated that the winner of whoever Cotto fights in May has to fight Gennady or give up the belt. If Cotto fights Canelo and gives up the belt and does not fight Golovkin, then I think his legacy will be tarnished. Is he [Cotto] willing to live with that? Who knows? If Canelo wins the belt it’s going to be up to Oscar. If they’re not willing to take the chance and they give up the belt, we’re stuck with having to look for an opponent, but at least Golovkin will be the WBC champion,” Sanchez said.
Cotto’s trainer Freddie Roach feels that Cotto is good enough to whip Golovkin. However, Roach doesn’t appear ready to put his prediction to a test by pushing Cotto to face Golovkin. Roach has said that he never sees Golovkin on HBO despite the fact that he’s fighting on the network three times a year.
By Roach saying that he doesn’t see Golovkin on HBO, it can be taken as code to mean that Golovkin isn’t visible enough for him to deserve a fight against Cotto.
If the Cotto-Canelo winner chooses not to face Golovkin in 2015, then Golovkin will be able to pick up the WBC strap and add it to his collection.
Will it make the Cotto vs. Canelo winner look bad for choosing not to face Golovkin? Yeah, but that would only be with the hardcore boxing fans. The casual fans would likely have no clue that Canelo or Cotto chose not to face Golovkin, so it’s not likely that the winner of that fight would take a big hit in terms of their popularity.
Golovkin is already widely recognized as the best fighter in the middleweight division by many boxing fans, so it wouldn’t be a big deal if Canelo or Cotto opted to steer around him rather than face him in the ring and go out on their shields.
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