By Dan Ambrose: Boxing commentator Teddy Atlas says IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (37-0, 33 KOs) has deteriorated in the last 2 years, and he feels that his fight against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (49-1-1, 34 KOs) on September 16 is a much closer one than it would have been had the two of them fought in the past.
Atlas says Golden Boy Promotions made a smart decision in waiting until Golovkin was older and Canelo was more improved before making the fight. Had they put Canelo in with Golovkin 2 years ago, Atlas thinks the size and power advantage for Triple G would have been too much for the redheaded Mexican star.
Atlas now thinks Golovkin has deteriorated to the point where Canelo has a chance of beating him. Atlas says Golovkin was exposed in his last 2 fights against Kell Brook and Danny Jacobs. Golovkin won both fights, but he wasn’t impressive enough in doing so for Atlas to feel that he was still exposed.
Golovkin and Canelo have a little over 1 month to go before they meet on September 16 on HBO pay-per-view at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Golovkin remains the betting favorite to win despite Atlas’ perception of him being older and not the same fighter he once was. Atlas thinks that Canelo has dramatically improved in the last 2 years. Just how much improvement Canelo has made is hard to tell for sure, given the opposition that Golden Boy Promotions has put him in with. Canelo hasn’t been facing stellar opposition in the last 2 years unfortunately.
“I think he X-factor is the power of Golovkin,” said Teddy Atlas to Fighthub. “When the fight was talked about 2 years ago, I was the first one to say it was a big mistake at that moment if Canelo fought him. They had he goose that laid the golden eggs. Why put him in the fox house where he could get eaten up and there’s no more golden eggs? I even said wait until he gets older and they waited. They’re really smart, them people. People asked me back then, ‘why not fight him.’ [I said], ‘Too big, too strong; Golovkin too big, too strong.’ But now 2 years later, he has deteriorated. He has not improved. You could say he’s been exposed in his last 2 fights with [Kell] Brook and Danny Jacobs. I love Danny Jacobs. I still think he exposed him,” said Atlas.
Well, at least Atlas is being honest about what he said 2 years ago in wanting Golden Boy to wait until Golovkin aged before putting Canelo in with him. I’m not sure if it’s the most sporting thing to do though. If you look at it from a sporting perspective, why would a fighter wait until his opponent was old before fighting him? That seems kind of weak, doesn’t it? If this was the NFL, would a team decide not to go to the Super Bowl because they wanted to wait until the players on the opposing team aged to the point where they weren’t as effective? That’s weak. If you look at the way Canelo is being matched as a business move and not a sporting move, then yes it was a good decision by Golden Boy to wait until Golovkin was 35 and no longer in his prime before making the fight. That’s a business move. In boxing, you see stuff like this unfortunately. Fighters wait until their opponent is old before they face them, because they want to avoid getting beaten by them while they’re in their prime. This only works when there’s a difference in ages between the fighters like there is with the 27-year-old Canelo and the 35-year-old Golovkin. If Golovkin was the same age as Canelo, then it would make no sense for Golden Boy to try and wait until Golovkin got older before they put Canelo in with him. They could have waited to let the fight marinate to make it a bigger fight, but it would have been a waste of time to let Golovkin age until he was over-the-hill before putting Canelo in with him.
“So this is a guy that is not hard to hit. Not the fastest guy in the world, a guy that has built his resume on knocking out European middleweights,” said Atlas about Golovkin. “And now he fights Danny Jacobs, and man, he has a tough time. Again, he’s 34-years-old. I think he’s dissipated. And you have Canelo, who’s still young. He’s getting better, he’s showing improvement. He has shown improvement. Defensively, he’s been able to incorporate that into his game. I think it’s a much, much closer fight that it was 2 years ago,” said Atlas.
These are the fighters that Golden Boy has matched Canelo against in the last 2 years:
– Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. – Weight drained and arguably over the hill
– Liam Smith
– Amir Khan
– Miguel Cotto – A small, aging champion that fights infrequently
– James Kirkland
The opposition for Canelo has been too poor to know whether he’s improved or not. Fighting Chavez Jr., Kirkland, Khan and Smith made absolutely no sense other than for record-padding purposes in keeping Canelo protected. Cotto is not the same fighter he once was, and he’s not considered to be in the same league as the top guys at 154 and 160. Canelo should have fought the Charlo brothers, Demetrius Andrade or Erislandy Lara. Canelo’s fight against Chavez Jr. at super middleweight was another very questionable match-up, which you could call cherry-picking at it’s finest.
If Canelo wanted to fight a super middleweight, then why didn’t he choose the best in the division like Chris Eubank Jr., Callum Smith, George Groves, David Benavidez, Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez or James DeGale. Any of those guys would have been very, very hard fights for Canelo. With Canelo choosing Chavez Jr., we didn’t get an accurate picture of how good he is to know for sure whether he’s improved or not.
I disagree with Atlas in his assertion that Golovkin has deteriorated in the last 2 years. I don’t see any real change in his ability since his fight against Willie Monroe Jr. in 2015. If you look back at that fight, Golovkin was getting hit by Monroe Jr. in the same way he was in the Kell Brook and Danny Jacobs fight. Monroe Jr. was landing. The main difference that I could see was Brook and Jacobs moved around the ring, limiting how much contact they had with Golovkin. They stalled out portions of the rounds by moving. In the end, it didn’t help them win the fight with Golovkin, because they still lost. But what they were clearly trying to do was limit how many times Golovkin could land. By using movement to lower the punch output from Golovkin, Brook and Jacobs made some of the rounds closer than they would have been had they stood their ground and fought GGG. We didn’t see Jacobs standing and fighting in the first 6 rounds, and that’s why he lost the fight. Jacobs gave away the first 5 rounds. When Jacobs did try and fight Golovkin in the last half of the contest, he was staggered in the 10th and unable to make up ground due to his inability to trade in a consistent enough manner to give himself a chance to win. I wouldn’t call that as Golovkin being exposed though. I think it was more of a case of Golovkin fighting 2 fighters that had made the decision that they weren’t going to stand and fight him. They were going to try and defeat Golovkin by fighting in brief spurts, hoping to steal enough rounds that way to get the win. It’s like how Floyd Mayweather Jr. fights. He uses movement to limit how many shots his opponents can land. With all the movement and the emphasis on defense, the rounds end up being decided on a few pot shots rather than on a high number of punches landed. It’s boring to watch, but Mayweather is still popular, because some boxing fans like to see the way he plays ‘keep away’ from his opponents. Brook and Jacobs used the Mayweather approach by playing ‘keep away’ from Golovkin. Again, I wouldn’t call that being exposed. You can say that Golovkin didn’t adjust well against those styles as he could have, but he hadn’t fought guys like that before in the pro ranks. Most of the fighters that Golovkin has fought during his career were for the most part stationary, and willing to fight him. Brook and Jacobs showed an unusual look against Golovkin. He didn’t struggle against him because his hand speed and power had “dissipated” like Atlas says. Golovkin struggled because he had to deal with fighters that were moving on him, and this was a new experience. Golovkin would have had the same problems against those fighters if they fought him earlier in his career when he was in his early 20s.
What’s surprising is that Jacobs and Brook didn’t try and use the fighting approach used by the last guy that beat Golovkin, Russian fighter Gaydarbek Gaydarbekov in the 2004 Olympics. Gaydarbekov used a punch and grab technique against Golovkin to beat him. The Russian fighter would throw shots and immediately grab Golovkin in a clinch to keep from getting hit by him. Once he was in a clinch, Gaydarbekov would grapple with Golovkin, and then fling him to the side when breaking from the clinch. It was like an MMA move the way that Gaydarbekov was flinging Golovkin. The referee that worked their Olympic finals let Gaydarbekov get away with that move the entire fight. He should have penalized the Russian fighter, because it was clearly a foul the way he kept doing that. Brook and Jacobs chose not to try and rough Golovkin up the way Gaydarbekov did. Jacobs had the size to get away with that approach if he’d tried. He looked huge the night of the fight.
“It’s a fight that makes me think, ‘do I still like Golovkin the way I did,’ because now it’s not about being big and strong,” said Atlas. ”It’s about being older, being one dimensional. That’s what I’ve seen in him lately. But it still comes to that X-factor power that Canelo has to defuse that power. He has to avoid that power, probably in the right hand for the most part. The power for the most part would be the right hand. Canelo has been vulnerable to right hands, and that’s where Golovkin likes to load up. He has to be able to avoid that if he’s going to win the fight,” said Atlas.
Golovkin has a very good left hand as well that he likes to throw. Atlas might not have watched too many of Golovkin’s fights in the past to know that he has a very good left hook that he likes to throw. If Canelo is entirely focused on trying not to get hit with Golovkin’s right hands, he could get nailed by one of his left hooks and knocked out. Golovkin is not one-dimensional as Atlas thinks he is. If you look at Golovkin’s fights against Jacobs and David Lemieux, you’ll note that he used his jab to box both from the outside. Golovkin didn’t put himself in harm’s way in those fights. Jacobs was getting hit repeatedly with Golovkin’s power jabs when he would try and attack. The jabs would snap Jacobs’ head back, causing him to stop his forward progress. After the fight, Jacobs’ face was badly swollen from the many jabs that Golovkin had hit him with in the fight. Golovkin showed a lot of boxing ability in that fight. A one-dimensional fighter would have plodded forward, looking to slug with Jacobs. Golovkin fought well, boxing and not slugging.
“So, it starts there,” said Atlas. ”Now when we look at Canelo being the smaller guy, maybe we look at that as a positive 2 years later, as an advantage. He’s the quicker guy. He’s the more mobile guy. He’s the more dimensional guy. He’s the more improved guy. Maybe he’s the more confident guy. He’s at his highest point with his confidence that he can be at right now. So that makes the fight more interesting for me, and much closer than it was 2 years ago,” said Atlas.
I don’t think Canelo is more dimensional than Golovkin. He does have better hand speed and he puts more emphasis on not getting hit than Golovkin, but that’s because he’s not trying to score knockouts the way Triple G has been doing. Golovkin has worked hard at putting together knockouts, because he realized how important they are in building up a large fan base. To get knockouts, you need to put yourself in the line of fire. For the Jacobs fight, Golovkin said that he wanted a “decision fight” against him. I think Golovkin decided that he wasn’t going to try and mow Jacobs down. For whatever reason, Golovkin wanted the Jacobs fight to go the full 12 rounds instead of it ending with a knockout. My thoughts are that Golovkin did this to lure Golden Boy in letting their golden goose Canelo fight GGG. That’s what Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez believes as well. If Golovkin had destroyed Jacobs, he wouldn’t have gotten the Canelo fight, says Sanchez. I happen to agree with him. Golden Boy likely would have made an excuse not to make the Golovkin fight if Jacobs had been annihilated by him last March.
