By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum isn’t giving Golden Boy Promotions flagship fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez any chance of beating K2 Promotions middleweight Gennady “Triple G” Golovkin when the two of them face each other eventually.
Arum thinks Golovkin will KO Canelo because he feels that Golovkin is just too good for him. Arum says that after Golovkin dispatches Canelo, he’ll match Triple G against his fighter WBO super middleweight champion Gilberto Ramirez (34-0, 24 KOs), and he’ll get revenge by beating Golovkin for the Mexican fans.
“We’re building to that fight [Gilberto Ramirez vs. Gennady Golovkin]. After Triple G knocks out Canelo, then Zurdo will get revenge for the Mexican people,” said Arum to Fighthype.com. Canelo is a very good fighter, but I think Triple G is something special. If I had to go with the winner of that fight, I would go with Triple G. I think most boxing people would, but that doesn’t demean Canelo. Canelo is a very good fighter,” said Arum.
There’s no question that Golovkin will beat Canelo. Anyone who saw how mediocre Canelo looked last Saturday night against Amir Khan, can’t be giving Canelo any chances of beating Golovkin. If the shoe was on the other foot and it was Golovkin that was in the ring with Khan last Saturday night instead of Canelo, I don’t think Khan would have won one round.
Against Canelo, Khan appeared to win four to five rounds in the eyes of Teddy Atlas and Freddie Roach. I saw the fight and I thought Khan won the first four rounds easily. Canelo looked uncoordinated. The only thing Canelo had going for him in that fight was his size and his power. The fact that he eventually caught up to Khan to knock him out in the 6th round wasn’t a surprise. I think if Khan had been in the ring with Golovkin, he would have been knocked out in one or two rounds, depending on when Golovkin wanted to stop him.
Practically any middleweight would have knocked Khan out last Saturday night. It didn’t take someone like Canelo to do the job on Khan. Any top 15 middleweight in the division would have destroyed Khan. The fact that it took six rounds for Canelo to do the job on Khan shows you how limited Canelo is as a fighter. He seems to be just another Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., a fighter that was able to get over on his smaller opponents by him melting down from the 170s and 180s to fight at middleweight against lighter fighters.
I think Canelo is the new age version of Chavez Jr. I guess that’s why he seems to be so reluctant to fight someone his own size like Golovkin, because when that fight eventually happens, the jig will be up just like it was for Chavez Jr. when he fought someone his own size in Andrzej Fonfara.
In speaking about last Saturday’ fight between Canelo and Khan, Arum said, “It was no fight. I knew it was no fight. The guy [Khan] didn’t have a chin. He can’t hurt you with a punch. How the hell was he going to win the fight? So it was just a question of how soon it would take for Canelo to pop him on the chin and then it was over. There’s no mystery,” said Arum.
I don’t think the Canelo vs. Khan fight was ever meant to be a fight. When you pick out an opponent that is two divisions lighter than yourself, it’s not intended to be a fight. It’s intended to be a massacre, which is what we saw last Saturday with Canelo knocked Khan really badly in a vicious way. That was Julian Jackson fighting Terry Norris all over again, but far, far worse. Norris moved up from welterweight to fight the junior middleweight Jackson, and he was knocked out cold in two rounds.
Khan moved up two divisions to fight the middleweight Canelo. It doesn’t matter that the fight took place at 155. Canelo has already shown himself to have special talent in making weight for 155 without it hurting him, and then rehydrating into the 170s to have a weight advantage over his opponents. We don’t even know how much Canelo has weighed when he entered the ring for his last two fights because HBO stopped listing his weight for some reason. Khan thinks Canelo was at least 180lbs for the fight. That’s pretty heavy for someone that made weight at 155.