Ann Wolfe: If I was in Kirkland’s corner it would not be the same fight

By Boxing News - 05/10/2015 - Comments

Canelo Alvarez v James Kirkland(Photo Credit:Ed Mulholland/Golden Boy/Golden Boy via Getty Images) By Dan Ambrose: Last night, junior middleweight James Kirkland (32-2, 28 KOs) fought without his long time trainer Ann Wolfe in his 3rd round knockout loss to Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (45-1-1, 32 KOs) at the Minute Maid Park in Houston, Texas.

Kirkland is unbeaten at 32-0 when trained by Wolfe, and his two defeats, both knockout losses, have come when he’s been with other trainers. Wolfe was at last night’s Canelo-Kirkland fight, and she feels that it would have been a much different story if she’d been working Kirkland’s corner for that fight. She says she knows how to bring the dog out of Kirkland.

“He [Canelo] came to fight,” Wolfe said to esnewsreporting.com. “He [Canelo] got hit as well, but with the great conditioning he was in, he snapped back. He got hit more than people think. I can’t take anything away from Canelo because he didn’t do anything he wasn’t supposed to do. But if I was in that corner [with Kirkland], it would have been a different fight.”

It might have been a different fight if Wolfe had been in Kirkland’s corner, but we’ll never get a chance to find out because the fight is done now. Canelo isn’t going to give Kirkland a do over just because Wolfe wasn’t in his corner. Canelo will be moving on to what he hopes will be a fight against WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto. Wolfe thinks that Canelo will lose that fight because she sees Cotto as the better fighter of the two due to the different things he can do in the ring.

If Kirkland wants a rematch against Canelo one of these days, he’s going to need to get busy with his pro career and start beating some of the top light middleweights in the division. That means not only staying really busy, which he hasn’t been doing in the past six years, but also he’ll need to beat the top fighters in the 154 pound division. Beating Glen Tapia types isn’t going to be good enough to get a rematch against Canelo one of these days. Kirkland is going to need to beat fighters like the Charlo brothers, Demetrius Adrade and Erislandy Lara if he can get a fight against them.

“That [expletive] broke my heart,” Wolfe said about Kirkland’s loss. “Yeah, he can only come back from it one way [by having her train him once again].”

It’s up to Kirkland whether he wants to get back with Wolfe again to see if she can turn his career around once again like she did in the past. But she can’t make Kirkland get back in the ring on a regular basis. Only Kirkland can do that, and he’s going to need to if he wants to bounce back from this defeat to get a second fight against Canelo. The 154 pound division is a weak enough one where we could see Canelo and Kirkland back in the ring with each other in the future, but that will only be if Kirkland can beat the top fighters in the division to make it worthwhile for Canelo to fight him again.

“I think Cotto is going to give him more problems than people are giving him credit for,” Wolfe said. “Cotto been there and done that, and won after whatchamacallit cheated and [expletive] him up. He snapped back from it. I think Cotto is an overall better fighter.”



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