By Dan Ambrose: First it was Oscar De La Hoya taking a shot at Gennady “GGG” Golovkin after his tougher than expected 5th round knockout win over Kell Brook last Saturday, and now it’s Saul “Canelo” Alvarez ripping into the Kazakhstan fighter over his performance.
Canelo says he always knew what Golovkin was as a fighter. He says that Golovkin is seen as a knockout artist, but who has he knocked out? Canelo sees Golovkin’s knockouts coming against no one with a name. Canelo further said that he’s not worried about Golovkin.
Despite not looking at his best against Brook last Saturday, Golovkin broke the British fighters’ eye socket with a hard shot early in 1st or 2nd round. The injury eventually resulted in Brook’s trainer Dominic Ingle stopping the fight in the 5th by throwing in the towel. Brook had stopped punching after having been hit by a body shot in the round.
From that point on, it was all target practice for Golovkin with him hitting Brook with hard shots, one after another. The only thing Brook could do is move his head avoid the shots, but he couldn’t throw anything back because he was getting hit too much. If Brook had tried to throw anything at that point, he would have been defenseless for one of Golovkin’s hard punches.
“I always knew who he is, what he was. Always,” Alvarez said to the latimes.com. “The world portrays him as this knockout king because he’s knocked out … who? Who has he knocked out? Nobody. The world got to see a little bit of what I know, what I always saw. They got to see that. I’m confident in the fighter I am and I have nothing to worry about.”
If Canelo is truly confident about his ability to handle Golovkin, then he should agree to fight him so that the boxing fans can see whether he can back up his tough talk. It’s not enough for Canelo to be talking about wanting to fight Golovkin. He needs to sign the contract to prove it.
Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya is still talking about Canelo not having grown into the 160lb division yet. How can Canelo not be a full middleweight yet when he’s rumored to be rehydrating into the 180s for his catch-weight fights.
“That’ll happen when Canelo fills into his body at 160 [pounds],” said De La Hoya to the latimes.com in talking about how Golovkin is going to get “exposed” when he faces his Mexican star at some point. De La Hoya thinks Canelo will fill into his body at 160 possibly this year. Well, if that’s the situation, then there’s no reason why Canelo shouldn’t be able to fight Golovkin in 2017.
Golovkin is about to turn 35-years-old, and by Canelo and Golden Boy waiting to make the fight, it gives some boxing fans the impression that they’re waiting until he gets old enough to beat. I think that’s the wrong way to go about it if they want to turn Canelo into a true star and not merely a guy that is popular due to his big built in fan base in the United States.
It would be big news if Canelo were to fight Golovkin in 2017, because the fight would be made while he was still in his prime more or less. But if Golden Boy and Canelo push the fight into the farther into future when Golovkin is over-the-hill, then they might wait too long and ruin the fight due to Golovkin potentially getting beaten by someone else.
This business of who Golovkin has knocked out can be applied to Canelo as well. If you look at the 33 fighters that Canelo has knocked out in his career, it’s pretty much mediocre fighters the whole lot of them.
Here are the last 12 knockouts on Canelo’s resume:
Amir Khan
James Kirkland
Alfredo Angulo
Josesito Lopez
Kermit Cintro
Alfonso Gomez
Ryan Rhodes
Carlos Baldomir
Luciano Leonel Cuello
Jose Miguel Cotto
Brian Camechis
Carlos Leonardo Herrera
Those are not relevant fighters at 154 or 160. Canelo hasn’t knocked out any good opponents during his career. If you look at all the guys that Canelo has on his entire resume, you can argue the best of the bunch that he knocked out was Amir Khan, and he’s not even an active fighter any longer. He fights like once a year and travels a lot. Khan isn’t a middleweight. He’s a welterweight. Canelo’s best knockout his resume is Khan in my view. If you look at Golovkin’s resume, he’s knocked out much better opposition. It’s not even close. Golovkin has knocked out far better opponents than Canelo.
Here are the last 12 knockouts on Golovkin’s resume:
Kell Brook
Dominic Wade
David Lemieux
Willie Monroe Jr.
Martin Murray
Marco Antonio Rubio
Daniel Geale
Osumanu Adama
Curtis Stevens
Nobuhiro Ishida
Gabriel Rosado
Grzegorz Proksa
Golovkin did not do a bad job against Brook considering how the British fighter was mostly just moving and throwing pot shots. Brook was never going to win the fight with the way he was unable to meet Golovkin’s all out attacks. All Brook was doing was throwing pot shots and moving around the ring. He wasn’t trying to stand his ground to fight Golovkin the way he needed to for him to have a chance of winning the fight.
Any fighter could have done what Brook did last Saturday, because all he was trying to do was land a couple of shots before taking off on the run. That’s not a winning formula. Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn was quick to reveal the judges’ scores after the fight, which showed that one judge had Brook up three rounds to one after four rounds while the other two had it dead even at two rounds a piece. That was poor scoring in my view, as two of the judges gave Brook the 1st round after he was staggered and badly hurt. When you see scoring like that, then you realize what Golovkin was up against in the fight. If the fight had gone the full distance, we might have seen a highly controversial decision, but Golovkin wasn’t going to let that happen. Golovkin physically broke Brook.