By Dan Ambrose: WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs) came out firing both barrels at IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs) in response to his comments about now wanting to give up weight by draining down to fight Canelo at a catch-weight of 155lbs in order to fight for his WBC 160lb title.
Canelo replied back on Monday in telling the media that he doesn’t care what Golovkin says because while he’s facing guys like Dominic Wade, he’s already fought many world champions and he’s still only 25-years-old.
“He [Golovkin] can say what he wants. I really don’t pay attention,” said Canelo in response to Golovkin’s comments about him not being willing to come down in weight one ounce to fight him at a catch-weight. “After his performance on Saturday and the level of opponent he had, it’s less important. I’m 25-years-old and I’ve fought so many champions and ex-world champions. That speaks for itself. So I really don’t give it any importance,” said Canelo.
In fairness to Golovkin, he had no choice but to fight Wade. The International Boxing Federation made Wade his mandatory challenger recently after the previous IBF mandatory suffered a shoulder injury in training camp. If Golovkin had ignored the IBF and fought whoever his promoter Tom Loeffler could get, the IBF would have stripped him of his IBF title. Golovkin didn’t want that to happen, so he went ahead and defended his IBF title against Wade.
Canelo may not realize this but his ability to get a lot of the top fighters to face him is largely due to his big fan base. Canelo has a tremendous built in fan base in the United States. Golovkin wasn’t blessed with the same thing because the United States doesn’t have a lot of people from his home country of Kazakhstan living there.
The fans that Golovkin has won over are ones that simply impressed with how he fights rather than where he comes from.
Canelo should probably give up on his need for fighting at catch-weights because that makes him look like a non-warrior. It would be understandable somewhat if Canelo was fighting someone from the super middleweight or light heavyweight division, but that’s not the case. Canelo is same size as Golovkin in fighting in the 170s.
Asking Golovkin to melt down to non-middleweight in order to fight him makes Canelo look like he’s trying to weaken him so that he can get an edge. If Canelo can’t fight Golovkin at the full weight, then he needs to give up his WBC title because it looks bad to have a world champion depending on catch-weights when defending their titles.