By Jeff Aranow: Trainer Freddie Roach believes that Saul “Canelo” Alvarez will beat Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. tonight in their fight on HBO PPV, and then potentially Gennady “GGG” Golovkin in September if that fight gets made. Roach isn’t sure if Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya wants to take the risk yet of having his “cash cow” Canelo beaten by GGG, so he’s not sure if we’ll see the Canelo-Golovkin fight yet.
Roach thinks that the 35-year-old Golovkin has slipped a bit recently with his last 2 fights against Daniel Jacobs and Kell Brook, both of which he still beat.
“Canelo is the bigger puncher of the two – I favor him to win,” said Roach to Ringtv.com.
Chavez Jr. will need to try and set a fast enough pace tonight to wear Canelo down in the second of the contest. The problem is Chavez Jr. might not be around by the second half in order to test Canelo’s stamina. Canelo’s promoter Bernard Hopkins is betting that Chavez’s corner will stop the fight by the 7th round tonight. He might be right. If Canelo is able to pepper Chavez Jr. with enough big shots for 7 or 8 rounds, Chavez Jr’s trainer Nacho Beristain might be forced to pull him out in order to save him from taking a bad beating.
Canelo probably will beat Chavez Jr., because this is a fighter that made to order for his style of fighting. You got to believe that Chavez Jr. has been well-scouted by Golden Boy Promotions to make sure he’s a non-threat to beating Canelo. The fighters that are threat to beating Canelo, Golovkin, Jermall Charlo, Daniel Jacobs, Jermell Charlo and Demetrius Andrade, are ones that aren’t being matched against him. Golden Boy likely wouldn’t let Canelo get anywhere near Chavez Jr. if he were fighting as well as the aforementioned fighters. That’s just reality. Golden Boy doesn’t want their top money fighter beaten. But they obviously think Canelo is good enough to deal Chavez Jr. a defeat tonight in their fight at the sold out T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
If Golden Boy turns out to be wrong in their likely assessment of the 30-year-old Chavez Jr. being a non-threat to Canelo, then it’s going to be a tough pill for the promotional company to swallow, because there will be a certain amount of boxing fans that will no longer want to pay to see Canelo fight, especially if he’s going to continue to fight lesser guys like the ones he’s been facing. The thing we usually see with Canelo’s fights is him matched against a guy with no real hope of beating him. That’s pretty much been the norm for Canelo’s fights over the last 4 years. The only guy that had a chance against Canelo lately was Erislandy Lara, and we saw what happened to him in getting arguably robbed of a decision.
”I don’t think Oscar wants to get his cash cow beat,” said Roach about whether Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya will put him in with Golovkin yet. ”Now, GGG exposed himself a little last fight – he’s slipping a little bit. He’s my friend… [He] had a bad night. He’s still a good puncher. Canelo versus Golovkin, it’s 50-50 at this point. Yes, at one point – one point – Golovkin was a big, big favorite. But Canelo has improved quite a bit.”
I don’t think Golovkin has lost anything in his game. I believe that Golovkin used the wrong game plan for the Jacobs fight. What Golovkin needed to do was put pure pressure on Jacobs the entire time and fight like he normally does with his seek and destroy style. What Golovkin did instead was to box Jacobs, and jab him all night long. Golovkin didn’t bring it like he normally does, and that allowed Jacobs to survive all the way to the end of the fight. Golovkin and his trainer Abel Sanchez failed to see that if they boxed with a boxer/puncher like Jacobs, they were going to have problems winning the fight. I think there were a failure of planning more than anything with Golovkin and Sanchez. It was a bad game plan that they used for the Jacobs fight, and there no adapting to switch to Golovkin’s normal style of fighting. A good trainer would have realized that his game plan was not working well, and he would have instructed Golovkin to go into knockout mode. That didn’t happen in the Jacobs fight, and you can only blame the trainer for failing to make that happen. Golovkin might need to start thinking for himself if he’s not being given the right advice in the corner, because it’s his career after all. Sanchez can’t have Golovkin trying to change from being a puncher to a boxer at this stage in his career. Why mess with success? It doesn’t make sense.
If De La Hoya and Golden Boy truly believe that Canelo is capable of beating Golovkin, then they’ll match him against the Kazakhstan fighter in September on the Mexican Independence Day holiday. De La Hoya and Golden Boy president Eric Gomez have been talking a lot lately that they’re ready to put Canelo in with Golovkin in September. We’ll if that’s the case in the next month or two when Golden Boy reveals who Canelo’s next opponent will be. There are a lot of rumors though that David Lemieux will be the guy that Golden Boy picks out to fight Canelo in September instead of Golovkin. That would be bad news for the boxing world, because there’s no real demand for Canelo vs. Lemieux.
It would obviously some interest from Canelo’s loyal fans and the hardcore boxing fans for the sake of comparisons. But it’s not a great fight because Lemieux was exposed in the real sense in getting knocked out by Golovkin in 2015. Roach says that Golovkin was exposed by Daniel Jacobs in their fight on March 18, but what he leaves out is the guy who won that fight was Golovkin, not Jacobs. You don’t get exposed when you WIN. You get exposed when you LOSE, and Jacobs lost despite trying hard to get an edge over Golovkin by skipping the fight day weigh-in by the International Boxing Federation, and bulking up. Jacobs had a weight advantage over Golovkin, and yet he still lost the fight.
If Canelo had chosen to make weight on the day of the fight like Golovkin did, I think he would have problems with Jacobs too, given that he skipped that weigh-in. Golovkin needs to think seriously about vacating the IBF title in the future so he doesn’t have to deal with being weighed on the day of the fight, because of Jacobs skipped that weigh-in in order to get an advantage over Triple G, then you can bet that Canelo will as well. I don’t think he’ll care too much about winning the IBF title. I think Canelo will be focusing instead on trying to beat Golovkin anyway he can. Picking up the IBF title will be less important than winning that fight and then having the bragging rights to say that he’s the man that gave GGG his first defeat.
Canelo is really limited when it comes to things that he can do inside the ring. Canelo is built like the 5’7” Miguel Cotto, and not much taller than him. As we saw in Canelo’s loss to Floyd Mayweather, he can’t handle fighters that stick and move for 12 rounds. Canelo doesn’t do well against guys that jab and don’t slug with him. Canelo is too short and stocky to ever be able to deal with someone that jabs and moves. He needs his opponents to let him get close enough for him to connect with his left hooks and right hands. Canelo’s wrestler-like built is not made for beating guys that stay on the outside. He’s also not built to fight long fast pace 12 round fights. Canelo is built for short range fights or fights that are fought at a slow pace. I don’t think Golovkin would accommodate Canelo to fight at a slow pace, and I don’t think Chavez Jr. will either.
