By Dan Ambrose: Former multi-division world champion “Sugar” Shane Mosley rates Saul “Canelo” Alvarez as having better boxing skills than IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin, and he thinks he could come out on top in their September 16 fight IF he can handle the pressure and power from the Kazakhstan fighter.
Mosley says he sees the Canelo-Golovkin fight as a 50-50 affair that will depend largely on how well Canelo handles the power from Golovkin’s shots. Canelo is going to be using a lot of head and upper body movement to keep from getting hit by Golovkin’s shots. We saw Canelo use a massive amount of movement to evade the many punches that Austin Trout was throwing at him.
Against Floyd Mayweather, Canelo was so badly out of his league that he couldn’t get out of the way of anything that was being thrown at him. The speed from Mayweather’s shots was just too quick for the redheaded Mexican star. That was the last time Canelo fought a really good fighter. Golden Boy Promotions have been making the right moves when it comes to Canelo’s fights since the Mayweather fiasco.
“I think Golovkin is very strong,” said Mosley to Fighthub. “I like Canelo’s skills, and I think Canelo has grown as a fighter. Time, I think, is on Canelo’s side, because he’s a little bit younger and he’s been around the game for a long time. He’s got a lot of experience, a great corner, and works hard. I like both guys. I like Canelo, but I also like Triple G. He’s very strong. He’s training at Big Bear and working hard too. So, it’s a great fight,” said Mosley.
Being with Golden Boy Promotions has helped Canelo with his match-making. It’s given him the advantage of being able to fight a lot of well-known fighters, but he’s mostly had a size advantage in his fights. Canelo won’t have the size advantage against GGG. That’s going to be a problem for Canelo. He’s a new comer at middleweight, and he did not look powerful in his last fight against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. on May 6. The fight was at a catch-weight of 164.5 lbs, but Canelo’s power did not look impressive even against a weight drained fighter like Chavez Jr. The former WBC middleweight champion Chavez Jr. looked emaciated for that fight.
Canelo’s punches were like slaps at the higher weight. At 154, Canelo’s shots look a lot more powerful against the opposition that he’s faced, which to be honest, hasn’t been that good. We’re talking guys like Amir Khan, Miguel Cotto, Erislandy Lara, Alfredo Angulo, Ryan Rhodes, Matthew Hatton, Mosey, Austin Trout, Josesito Lopez, Kermit Cintron, Alfonso Gomez, Lovemore Ndou, Carlos Manuel Baldomir and Jose Miguel Cotto. Lara is a good fighter, but he didn’t get the decision against Canelo. I thought Lara beat him.
Golovkin has more ways to win than Canelo does. Golovkin can either slug or jab from the outside to win. Canelo is pretty much limited to just boxing. He’s got to try and defeat Golovkin with speedy combinations thrown at medium distance. Canelo has to concentrate a lot on his defense, because if he gets hit with Golovkin’s best shots, it’s not going to end well for him. Canelo takes a head shot well, but he’s not no fought a lot of big punchers in his career. He’s usually been the heavier fighter in his fights. James Kirkland was around the same size as Canelo, but he didn’t last long enough to test his chin. Canelo knocked Kirkland out in 3 rounds. That’s impressive, but Kirkland was almost knocked out by Nobuhiro Ishida in 1 round in 2011. Canelo didn’t do as good as job against Kirkland as Ishida, who was hardly a big puncher.
What Mosley isn’t talking about is the size and power differences between the two. Besides being more powerful, Golovkin is the taller guy with the longer reach than Canelo. Golovkin has the far better jab, and we just saw him use it with great effectiveness against a bigger fighter than himself in 6’0” Danny Jacobs in their fight on March 18. Golovkin was able to neutralize Jacobs’ offense by jabbing him when he would try and initiate. Repeatedly, Jacobs would come forward and be met with a stiff jab from Golovkin that would stop his momentum and force him to restart. That was the real story of the fight. Golovkin’s jab kept Jacobs bottled up and helpless in the 2nd half of the fight.
Golovkin did the same thing against David Lemieux in their fight in 2015. These are both taller fighters with longer reaches than the 5’8” Canelo. If Golovkin decides to use his jab against Canelo, it’s going to be a one-sided fight. Canelo doesn’t have the arm length to reach Golovkin.
Canelo has fast hands, but if he can’t land his short punches due to Golovkin’s jab, then this is going to be a one-sided fight. I don’t think Golovkin will be satisfied with toying with Canelo like he did in his win over Lemieux. Golovkin will want to mix it up to make it interesting for the paying boxing fans that will be ordering the fight on HBO PPV.
Mosley lost a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision defeat to Canelo on May 5, 2012 in a fight that took place in the 154 lb. division. Canelo looked so much bigger than Mosley in that fight. The size and the power advantage that Canelo had in that fight was what won it more than anything. Mosley started his career out at lightweight in 1993, and he’d been fighting as a pro for almost 20 years by the time he fought Canelo in 2012. By the time Mosley fought Canelo, he’d been beaten by Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao, Ronald “Winky” Wright, Vernon Forrest and Miguel Cotto. This was not a prime Mosley that fought Canelo.
”I can’t really put my finger on it,” said Mosley on the Canelo-GGG fight. ”I think Canelo has better skills as far as movements, boxing skills. I think Triple G is very strong and he hits harder. It’s going to be whether Canelo can take Triple G’s pressure and power or not. I think if he can take it, Canelo might win, but if not, it’s going to be very hard for Canelo to finagle it can’t accept that type of power. It’s a pick em fight to me,” said Mosley.
If Canelo chooses to make this fight in which he tries to “finagle” a win over Triple G, let’s hope that the judges score the fight accurately and don’t just give it to the more popular of the two. Canelo has won a couple of questionable decisions in his career against Erislandy Lara and Trout that could have gone the other way. It’s interesting that both of those fights went Canelo’s way. If he beats Golovkin by a controversial decision too, it’s going to upset a lot of boxing fans. Even Canelo’s win over Miguel Cotto was one that some people in the boxing world question. I think Canelo did enough to win the fight, but it was closer than what he judges had for their scoring. They didn’t give Cotto much credit for anything that he’d one.
