(Photo credit: Juan Carlos Manzano) By Dan Ambrrose: Amir Khan is taking a difficult and potentially dangerous fight against a bigger fighter in Saul “Canelo” Alvarez on Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. This is a fight that Khan could get hurt by the heavier and stronger Canelo if he gets caught with one of his big power shots. Khan’s trainer Virgil Hunter acknowledges that Khan could lose this fight, but he still respects him for daring to be great by taking a risky fight that could lead to him getting knocked out by Golden Boy Promotions’ No.1 fighter.
However, Hunter wonders whether Canelo will do the same thing by taking a risky fight against Gennady “GGG” Golovkin is victorious on Saturday night. To be sure, Canelo has had a couple of difficult fights in his career against Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Miguel Cotto.
However, those fights didn’t possess the same danger that a fight against Golovkin would. Cotto was 35 when Canelo fought him, and giving up 10 to 15 pounds of weight. Mayweather hasn’t been a knockout puncher since he moved up in weight from super featherweight many years ago. Golovkin has knocked everyone he’s faced in the last eight years going back to 2008. He has a string of 22 consecutive knockouts, and a slow moving fighter like Canelo would be easy pickings for him.
“Isn’t that interesting? Isn’t it? Isn’t it interesting? He’s [Khan] fighting a guy who presents a lot of danger to him, but then when we flip it over — see, he’s putting himself in danger, but if the other guy [Canelo] wins, will he have the same heart that Amir got? See, he might win, but do you have the heart that he has to put yourself in danger? You say you wanna be great, well if you wanna be great, well, that’s what you gotta do, you gotta do what Amir Khan did to face you. You know what I’m talking about,” said Hunter to ESPN.com.
I think Canelo and his promoters at Golden Boy have been pretty clear recently that they don’t plan on fighting Golovkin next. When you heard Canelo say that Golovkin has to earn a shot against him by fighting better opposition, which was a clear statement that he’s not going to be fighting him. Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler pointed out that he’s been the WBC mandatory challenger for two years now since 2014, and that’s a long time to wait for a title shot. With Canelo saying that Golovkin has to fight more fighters to prove himself against him, it means we’re not going to see a fight between them.
Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya has said for months now that the fight between him and Golovkin will eventually take place. He wants the fight to marinate longer before he makes that fight. However, if Canelo is going to setup conditions where Golovkin has to fight guys that he approves up, then he needs to use his popularity to convince the other top fighters in the middleweight division to step up to the plate and fight Golovkin. He doesn’t have the ability to get the top guys to agree to fight him because he’s not a PPV fighter yet the way Canelo is. Golovkin doesn’t have a built in fan base of millions of fans like Canelo does.