By Sean Jones: HBO’s Countdown to Canelo vs. Golovkin 30-minute special is an interesting preview of the middleweights September 16 showdown on HBO pay-per-view at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Golovkin was not in great shape during the filming of parts of the Countdown Canelo vs. Golovkin. You could see a spare tire around the midsection of Golovkin when he was in the ring being videotaped with boxing trunks on. Golovkin did not look like the same fighter who had fought Daniel Jacobs for 12 hard rounds earlier this year on March 18.
Canelo faces Golovkin on September 16 starting at 8:00 p.m. ET on HBO pay-per-view from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. This is the same venue as the recent Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor. The difference is the tickets for the Canelo-GGG fight weren’t priced the same. Canelo’s promoters a Golden Boy are making a huge push to market the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight now that the Mayweather-McGregor fight is out of the way. Golden Boy has a little over 2 weeks to go before the big fight, and they’re going to make sure they market the heck of the fight to make it a success.
There’s no telling how many PPV buys the fight will generate. A conservative estimate is 2 million buys, but could go further than that. There seems to be a ton of interest in this fight, both from hardcore and casual boxing fans. Obviously, the MMA sites aren’t pushing the fight like they were for the Mayweather-McGregor event. Canelo-GGG will still do very well on HBO PPV, and give the boxing fans a great fight for as long as it lasts.
Canelo and Golovkin have all the attention from the world for their fight on September 16. The heavily hyped Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor fight has come and gone, and it left nothing to remember it by other a huge bill for the boxing and MMA fans that ordered it. It’s only been 5 days since the Mayweather-McGregor fight took place, but it seems like it was years ago, but it was a forgettable fight.
Canelo-Golovkin is the genuine article. This is a real fight, and we should see the fireworks that we were promised to get with the under producing Mayweather-McGregor dud.
A lot of different boxers have come out of the woodwork to give their opinions on the Canelo vs. GGG fight. Most of them see it coming down to whether Golovkin can knockout Canelo. They’re not giving Golovkin much of a chance of winning a decision over the popular Mexican fighter. Almost everyone feels that if Golovkin doesn’t knock Canelo out in the first half of the fight, he’ll wind up getting out-boxed and lose a decision. It’s hard to predict.
Miguel Cotto almost beat Canelo by boxing him in their fight in 2015, and I don’t think anyone would pick Cotto to beat Golovkin. If an older and smaller fighter like the 5’7” Cotto almost beat Canelo by a decision, then you would have to say Golovkin has a pretty good shot of out-boxing him too. Golovkin just finished jabbing his way to a 12 round unanimous decision victory over Daniel Jacobs on March 18 of this year. Beating a big super middleweight-sized fighter like Jacobs by out-boxing him was not an easy task. Canelo would have his hands full with Jacobs. Incidentally, Canelo still believes Jacobs beat Golovkin. He thinks he deserved the win.
“The fight will ultimately come down to can Canelo take Triple G’s power,” said former WBC cruiserweight champion Tony Bellew to Betsafe. “If Canelo can take Triple G’s power, I think Canelo will win on points. If he can’t, then obviously it’s a Triple G stoppage. It would go mid-to-late for Triple G. If Canelo does survive the stone, because Triple G is going to turn up the pace and he’s going to walk him down,” said Bellew.
Trying to predict what Golovkig is going to do in this fight is hard to do. Going into Golovkin’s fights against David Lemieux and Danny Jacobs, most boxing pundits were predicting that Triple G would go to war with both of them and look to knock them out as fast as possible. Golovkin fooled everyone by fighting behind his powerful jab, and avoiding the enormous power shots from both of them. Golovkin did eventually stop Lemieux with a body shot in the round 8. In the Jacobs fight, Golovkin fought at a slow pace, using his jab and not applying the kind of pressure on him that he had against his previous opponent Kell Brook.
Golovkin had less to worry about against Brook than he did with Jacobs. In Golovkin’s fight against the big puncher Curtis Stevens, he boxed him from the outside in the same way he did against Lemieux and Jacobs. Before the Stevens fight, Golovkin made it sound like he was going to go to war with him. Golovkin didn’t. He was selective in the big shots he threw in the fight until the 8th, when Stevens seemed to give up along the ropes and was taken out on his feet. Golovkin will likely use the same game plan for Canelo that he did in the Lemieux, Stevens and Jacobs fight.
Golovkin feels comfortable softening his opponents up with his jab before opening on them with big power shots. Golovkin already knows by now that Canelo’s biggest weakness, besides his stamina problems, is his limitations in stopping a jab. Canelo doesn’t handle jabs well at all. Canelo has learned how to move his head well, but that doesn’t help him when his opponents throw a lot of jabs at him the way Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Erislandy Lara both did in their fights with him.
“Canelo has never been a runner. Canelo isn’t going to run,” said Bellew.” It’ll be some fight. It really, really will. It’ll be very tense. Both will be very wary, especially in the first 4 rounds. But once those 4 rounds are up, I think the better boxer stylistically well see from Canelo. Once again, it’s all about whether he can take that power,” said Bellew.
Bellew is selling Golovkin short by assuming the fight’s outcome will be determined by the 4th round. That sounds like an overly simplistic analysis by Bellew. I don’t think the outcome of the Canelo vs. GGG fight will determined at all. The fight could come down to the later rounds before we know who the ultimate winner is. If Golovkin wears Canelo down with pressure in rounds 11 and 12, we could still see a stoppage late. Golovkin stopped Martin Murray in round 11 with some big shots. Of course, Murray was using a lot of movement to survive until the 11th.
Canelo has a chance of knocking Golovkin out if he attacks him with 10 to 15 shots in a row to the head. Kell Brook looked like he had Golovkin hurt in round 2 of their fight after he landed a big uppercut to the head. Brook followed that up with 4 punches to the head of Golovkin. You could see that Golovkin appeared to be rattled from the series of shots from Brook. If Canelo can do the same thing Brook did in landing a burst of shots to the head of Triple G, then I think it’s possible for Canelo to stop him. But it’s going to take more than 3-4 consecutive punches from Canelo for him to knockout Golovkin, because he has a good chin. He’ll take the punches rom Canelo if he only throws a small amount. Canelo must attack Golovkin with a lot of shots for him to have a chance of knock him out. Golovkin can take the short bursts of shots without any problems. What we don’t know is if Golovkin can handle getting hit 10 consecutive times with big shots from Canelo.
The Countdown to Canelo vs. Golovkin special looks at some of the old fights of the two fighters. There’s not much in the way of quality as far as he opposition for the two fighters. Canelo is seen beating up on the much smaller and older Shane Mosley, and defeating 140 lb. fighter Josesito Lopez after having him move up 2 divisions to fight him a 154. It’s kind of the same thing Canelo did in having Amir Khan move up 2 divisions from welterweight to fight him at middleweight. Golovkin did the same thing in fighting welterweight Kell Brook last September.
Canelo-Golovkin will give the boxing fans a chance to see two of the best middleweights in the division. The jury is still out whether Canelo and GGG are the best. You could say that Golovkin was the best middleweight in the division 2 years ago in 2015 before the emergence of Danny Jacobs as a major player, and before guys like Jermall Charlo, Canelo and Sergiy Derevyanchenko started making waves.
If there isn’t controversy surrounding the outcome of the Gennady Golovkin vs. Canelo Alvarez fight, we could see the winner of this fight receive a great deal of poisitive attention from the boxing fans. For Golovkin, it’s very important for him to win the fight, because he doesn’t have the benefit of a huge fan base that was already there for him. Golovkin must win his fans fight by fighting in looking great and knocking everyone out.
Golovkin will lose a lot of boxing fans if he gets beaten in this fight. He can’t afford to do that. Golovkin isn’t a PPV fighter yet like Canelo. We’ve already see how boxing fans will pay to watch Canelo beat up on guys like Amir Khan, Liam Smith and Alfredo Angulo on PPV. Golovkin could never get away with fighting that lower level opposition on PPV. The fans would want nothing to do with paying to see Golovkin beat up on Khan, Smith and Angulo. But if Golovkin defeats Canelo, then maybe the boxing public will be willing to pay to see him fighting anyone like they’re doing right now with Canelo.
