By Sean Jones: Golden Boy Promotions will need to put their star Saul “Canelo” Alvarez into another rebuilding phase if he loses his mega-fight against middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin on September 16 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Whatever Canelo does in this fight, he needs to make sure he goes out on his shield against Golovkin. There are large amount of fans in boxing that already see Canelo as having ducked Golovkin, and many of them feel he mentally quit against Floyd Mayweather Jr. Canelo has to make sure he fights until the referee steps in an stops the fight.
Canelo can’t quit against Golovkin. Being branded a quitter would be a terrible blow for Canelo’s career. There’s too much riding on this fight for Canelo to take a knee or to quit on his stool. He’s got to down swinging if he wants to remain a popular fighter in the future. Losing is never a good thing for a fighter, but they can cushion the fallout from the loss if they fight tooth and nail until the bitter end.
Canelo’s trainer Eddie Reynoso will need to leave him out there with Golovkin until the referee pulls the plug on the fight. Reynoso shouldn’t throw in the towel when or if Canelo starts getting whipped badly by GGG. The way that Canelo seemed to give up against Mayweather after the first 3 rounds, it made him look really bad. Canelo wasn’t even trying to attack Mayweather until the later rounds. Canelo had the look of someone that had just given up mentally and accepted the defeat.
Canelo (49-1-1, 34 KOs) has already gone through a rebuilding process after his loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2013. It was a one-sided fight. Canelo received a pass from the boxing fans for his defeat to Mayweather because he was facing the best fighter in the sport. Canelo was young at 22 at the time. No one could blame him for that loss.
The boxing fans WILL blame Canelo if he gets knocked out by Golovkin. There can be no overlooking that loss. Golden Boy Promotions would need to confront the painful truth that Canelo is just not good enough to beat the best fighters. That would a hard pill for Canelo and Golden Boy to swallow. When you have a fighter that is as popular as Canelo, it’s expected that he have the talent to match that popularity.
Losing to Golovkin would show the boxing world that Canelo does not have the needed talent to go along with his popularity. Canelo would be in the same boat that Oscar De La Hoya was after he started getting beaten by guys like Shane Mosley and Felix Trinidad. De La Hoya remained popular after those losses, but he was no longer viewed as the best. In Canelo’s case, he never proved that he was the best at 154. He didn’t fight the Charlo brothers, Demetrius Andrade or Jarrett Hurd.
Canelo is a good fighter, but he seems to be lacking in a couple of key areas of his game for him to beat a talent like Golovkin.
The flaws in Canelo’s game are in these 2 important areas:
– Stamina
– Power
It’s going to be next to impossible for Canelo, 27, to defeat Golovkin without power and stamina. The only thing that Canelo can hope for is going the distance. The judges might give him a controversial decision like the one he received against Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara. Even Canelo’s fight against Miguel Cotto was close enough to be considered a draw if not a loss for him. It was not a dominating performance by Canelo, that’s for sure. These were all top fighters, and Canelo showed that he couldn’t beat then conclusively. Indeed, you can argue that Canelo lost all 3 of those fights but was still given wins by the judges.
Golovkin has flaws in his game that Canelo can expose. His hand speed is not what should be for him to beat a fighter like Canelo. Golovkin’s power is good, but he doesn’t seem to hit as hard as his record would have you believe. Golovkin is capable of landing with tremendous power when he loads up on a shot, but most of the time, he’s hitting with moderate power. As Willie Monroe Jr. said, Golovkin has excellent placement of his punches. That’s what makes him so good. He knows exactly where to throw his shots for him to slow down and stop his opponents.
Golovkin couldn’t knockout Danny Jacobs. It’s debatable whether Golovkin tried to KO Jacobs. If he did try and stop Jacobs, then that’s not a good sign that he’ll be able to do that against Canelo. Jacobs was a measuring stick to see how well Golovkin would do against Canelo. Golovkin barely beat Jacobs, and he struggled with his hand speed, size and movement. The 35-year-old Golovkin is getting up there in age. If he’s going to beat Canelo, he’s going to need to fight at the level he was at when he was in his early 30s. GGG did not look good in his last 2 fights. I’m not sure if the Golovkin we saw against Kell Brook and Danny Jacobs has the talent and the speed to beat Canelo.
It looks to some boxing fans that Canelo waited until Golovkin started to show age before agreeing to fight him. Golovkin’s power and skills did not look out of this earth amazing against Kell Brook and Jacobs. He just looked like a guy that was possessed with a good jab and heavy hands. Canelo would never admit that he waited for Golovkin to turn 35 in order to fight him.
Canelo maintains that this as the right time to fight Golovkin. That leaves the boxing fans to decide what means. Unfortunately in this sport fighters tend to avoid facing dangerous opponents until they show they’re no longer dangerous. One the talented fighters start to fade due to age and ring wear, and then suddenly they have a swarm of top contenders and champions willing to fight them. Mayweather is a special case. He was so popular that fighters wanted to fight him regardless of the high probability of them getting beaten.