Malignaggi: Canelo won’t give Golovkin a rematch anytime soon

By Boxing News - 09/22/2017 - Comments

Image: Malignaggi: Canelo won’t give Golovkin a rematch anytime soon

By Sean Jones: Paulie Malignaggi says Gennady “GGG” Golovkin can forget about getting an immediate rematch with Saul “Canelo” Alvarez now that he failed to beat him last Saturday night in their fight in Las Vegas, Nevada. Malignaggi says Canelo and Golden Boy Promotions will stall the rematch to wait for Golovkin to age some more before they finally make the rematch in possibly 2 years from now.

Canelo (49-1-2, 34 KOs) won’t be in a hurry to fight Golovkin (37-0-1, 33 KOs) again, because he gave the boxing fans the fight they wanted to see and he didn’t lose, says Malignaggi. Canelo and Golovkin fought to a controversial 12 round draw last Saturday night on September 16 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. The judges’ scores have been highly criticized by the boxing world, who felt collectively that Canelo was given favoritism due to his popularity with the way the fight was scored. The judges scored it 118-110 for Canelo, 115-113 for Golovkin and 114-114.

Malignaggi says he had Golovkin winning 9 rounds to 3. He feels that 8 rounds was a passable score, but anything after that was just appallingly bad scoring. Boxing News 24 scored the fight 9 rounds to 3 for Golovkin. He controlled the fight against Canelo, who spent most of every round with his back against the ropes, looking tired. A lot of the time, it looked like Canelo was resting against the ropes.

”I thought Golovkin got a raw deal. Everybody’s talking about a rematch,” said Malignaggi to The World Podcast. “You guys got [expletive] out now, bro. You guys are the public. Everybody’s talking about they’re going to do the rematch. Now that Canelo finally had to fight him after it took 2 years to finally fight him, he escapes it without a loss. Now he can say, ‘I gave you what you wanted. Now go [expletive] yourself. I don’t have to fight him right away now. I gave you what you wanted. He didn’t beat me. That’s it.’ I don’t see the rematch happening, and if it happens, they’re going to smoke out Golovkin and let him get nice and old. Golovkin isn’t a spring chicken now, and then maybe fight him in another 2 years, maybe, if he’s lucky. Instead, if Golovkin got the rightful decision he deserved, the rematch would happen right away. That rematch would happen right away. Instead now, Canelo, who kept his reputation by not suffering a loss, you’re not going to put that reputation at risk again. Are you kidding me? He has no shot at the rematch happening. I’ll tell you what happens next. Business-wise, Canelo’s with Golden Boy. I’ll tell you who he fights. It’s going to be against Diego De La Hoya. It could be Cotto. That’s one too. You got Cotto as a possibility. Lemieux is lurking in the background. Canelo and Cotto might be the next one,” said Malignaggi.

Canelo doesn’t seem like he’s in a rush to get back inside the ring with Golovkin. We’re already being told by Canelo that he’s not planning on fighting again until next year, when he will likely be fighting on Cinco de Mayo on May 5. The question is would Canelo be staying out of the ring for the next 8 months if he had lost the fight to Golovkin? Malignaggi doesn’t think so. He believes Canelo would be in a hurry to fight GGG again, because it would be imperative that he face him a second time. But with Canelo getting a draw against Golovkin last Saturday, it means he avoided a loss, and his reputation didn’t take a big hit like it would have if he had been knocked out or beaten by a one-sided decision.

If Canelo is going to fight Miguel Cotto next, then he’s going to need to get back inside the ring in December, because that’s when Cotto supposedly is retiring from boxing. It’s doubtful that Canelo will fight David Lemieux, because he’s really dangerous and it would mean that he would be fighting another big puncher.

“We had the Golovkin vs. Canelo fight,” said Paulie Malignaggi. “For me, it was a very controversial ending. I don’t see any feasible way you can have anything but a Golovkin win. I think if you had Canelo winning, you were probably rooting for Canelo and looking for any reason to give him a round. You have to put your emotions to the side. If you put your emotions to the side, I think Golovkin controls the entire fight,” said Malignaggi.

The decision handed down by the judges was totally controversial. There’s no other way of looking at the results of that fight without seeing it as controversial. You have 2 of the judges failing to give Canelo, the most popular fighter in boxing, a well-deserved defeat. The scoring of the rounds was strange, as those 2 judges gave Canelo rounds in which he was dominated by Golovkin.

”People were telling me that Canelo was backing up to the ropes on his own, like he was that comfortable. Who the [expletive] backs to the ropes against a big puncher like that and limits their defensive options by backing up against the ropes?” said Malignaggi. “This is not a game playing in there. This is not ping pong. Who puts themselves in danger because they’re that comfortable against a puncher of that magnitude? You wind up there because the guy put you there. That’s really how it works. When there’s that much danger on the line, you don’t put yourself willingly; not with a puncher like that, absolutely not. If you wind up there, it’s because the guy put you there,” said Malignaggi.

There’s no question that Canelo was forced to back up to the ropes from the pressure that the Kazakhstan fighter Golovkin was putting on him. Canelo did well in spurts while in the center of the ring, but he was taking some big shots when he was there, and he was being forced to fight hard. Canelo couldn’t do that, so he would retreat to the ropes and start circling the ring. It was obviously part of the plan for Canelo to move, as it saved him from being picked apart by Golovkin the way he would have. Canelo and his team knew that he would never stand a chance if the stood and fought Golovkin toe-to-toe for 12 rounds. Canelo isn’t built for long distance, high paced fight. Canelo can fight hard for short 2 to 3 round periods where the fight is over by round 3, but he can’t fight hard for a full 12 rounds. So instead of doing that, Canelo moved constantly, and fought in spurts. Fighting in spurts means you’re giving up on the idea of winning a decision. Of course, when you have scoring being done like we saw last Saturday night, you can still avoid a loss, but you end up looking really bad by seeming to have the judges favor you in a fight that you didn’t deserve. That’s why Canelo and Golden Boy are taking so much heat now from the boxing public. They saw Canelo lose and then receive a 12 round draw that he didn’t deserve.

“For me, Golovkin won it. I had it 9-3, Golovkin,” said Malignaggi. ”That’s how wide I had it. If you had it 8-4, fine, even 7-5. Adelaide Byrd had I 118-110, Canelo, which is appalling. I think 7-5 Golovkin is still pretty disgraceful. I think 6-6 is pretty disgraceful. I think 8-4 is as far as you can go. After that, you’re starting to give Canelo rounds that he didn’t get his [expletive] kicked in. Golovkin shouldn’t have to win a round just because he didn’t beat the [expletive] out of the guy. If you win a round, you win a round. If you win a round, you wind a round entirely. You shouldn’t have to beat the [expletive] out of somebody to get credit to win a round. If you win a round regularity, you should be allowed to win a round. If you give Canelo more than 4 rounds, it’s because you started to give Canelo rounds where he didn’t get his [expletive] kicked too badly. Those are still rounds that he lost, I’m sorry. That’s not how you judge boxing. You’re not looking for a reason to give a round to Canelo. You’re looking for a reason to give a round to a guy that won the round. You can’t judge that fight looking for every little reason to give Canelo a round. If you just a fight like that, then you’re not judging it correctly. That’s the problem how people judge money fighters like Canelo. They look for any little reason to give him a round. That’s not how you judge boxing, I’m sorry,” said Malignaggi.

It was definitely strange how Canelo was given a lot of rounds where he was tired, and fighting defensively against the ropes. Golovkin wasn’t landing his right hand too often, but he was connecting with his jab, which was a very powerful one. It wasn’t a normal jab.

This isn’t the first time that Canelo dodged a loss in a fight where he fought with his back against the ropes for most of the match. In Canelo’s fight with Austin Trout in 2013, he spent the entire second half of the fight with his back against the ropes, eating jabs. Trout did just as good a job of dominating Canelo with his jab as Golovkin did. The judges scored it in Canelo’s favor 115-112, 118-109 and 117-111. I saw the fight and I had it scored in Trout’s favor 9 rounds to 3. Trout was jabbing Canelo all night long. But instead of the judges focusing on all the jabs that Canelo was eating, they focused instead on his occasional big shots he would land, which were very rare. Like in the Golovkin fight, you had judge with a very strange score of 118-109 in favor of Canelo. If you saw the fight, you’d know that Canelo did not deserve to win 118-109.

”Canelo fights in spots. Golovkin specializes in beating you mentally before he beats you physically,” said Malignaggi. ”He forces you to fight when you don’t want to fight. He puts you in position where you don’t want to be. Canelo was backing off. Canelo was not fighting until he had to fight. Canelo was barely ever leading. When Canelo was in the center of the ring, that’s when he had the good spots. When Canelo was on the ropes, he was looking not to fight. He was only fighting back when he had to. He was not taking you back to the ropes so he could start leading and start fighting. Canelo was going back to the ropes to try and rest and waste as much time as he could before he has to fight again. He was looking not to fight. Golovkin’s mental pressure is making you feel like you chronically have to fight, so Canelo is constantly running out of room. The walls are closing in. He’s going to the ropes. How long Canelo could delay fighting before he finally have to throw some punches and finally have to react when the guys throwing. There were some great reactions he had, but it doesn’t mean he was controlling the anything. Just because Golovkin isn’t as explosive as Canelo when he throws punches doesn’t mean he doesn’t hit any less hard. He never threw with that explosiveness that Canelo had, where it looks like he’s fast and it looks spectacular. Golovkin kind of punches at you, and he’s lumbering a lot of the time and you go down. Everybody goes down. Just because Canelo didn’t go down doesn’t mean Golovkin isn’t throwing those punches hard. He’s always throwing punches like that. When they do land, most guys go down. You’ve got to give Canelo credit not going down. He took some good shots,” said Malignaggi.

Canelo fought Triple G like he didn’t want to win the fight outright. Canelo fought more like someone who was hoping to go the full 12 rounds so he could possibly steal it on the scorecards, which you can argue is exactly what happened. Nonetheless, it’s not as if GGG and his team Abel Sanchez and Tom Loeffler hadn’t been adequately warned ahead of time that they could be robbed against the highly popular 27-year-old Canelo coming into the fight. They all knew that there was a chance that if the fight went the distance, it would result in a win for Canelo no matter how the fight was fought. Golovkin did not fight the way he needed to for him to make sure the judges had the opportunity to score the fight and take his win away from him.

The way that Golovkin fought in the final 10 seconds of the fight in round 12 was how he needed to fight the entire fight. Had Golovkin attacked Canelo the way he did in the final seconds of the bout, there’s no question that Canelo would have been dust by the 4th round. There’s no way that Canelo would have made it past 4th, even if he tried to run like he did last Saturday. Canelo wouldn’t have been able to get away from Golovkin if he jumped on him like a giant spider like he did in the final seconds of round 12. Canelo wouldn’t have been able to get away from Golovkin, and it would have been over quickly. Instead of doing that, Golovkin fought Canelo like he did Danny Jacobs, boxing him from the distance, counting on the judges to do their job by giving the fight to the guy that was dominating. Unfortunately, for Golovkin, he found the hard way that you don’t beat a popular fighter like Canelo by a decision. You jump on him, bury him with punches and make sure the judges are spectators and don’t play a role in the final outcome of the fight. Golovkin should have learned his lesson from looking at the crazy scoring that was done in his fight with Kell Brook last year. The judges saw that fight as even, and one even had Brook up 3 rounds to 1. Golovkin dominated just like he did with Canelo, but the judges still saw the fight as being largely an even fight. It clearly wasn’t an even fight. GGG was giving Brook a beating a chasing him around the ring.

“David Lemieux is a possibility for Canelo as well,” said Malignaggi in discussing the likely next opponent for Canelo. “The options for Canelo are relatively easy now. He’s not going to fight Golovkin, I’m telling you. I’ll be very shocked if he fights Golovkin. The money is there for Canelo to fight anybody. He’s not going to put that at risk. Oscar De La Hoya is not going to put that at risk. If you wanted to see a rematch, then that would have been done by Golovkin getting the decision. If Golovkin would have gotten the decision, then you would have seen the rematch. There’s not going to be a rematch. The champion at middleweight is Golovkin. Canelo has no title,” said Malignaggi.

I see it the way that Malignaggi sees it with Golovkin having blown his chance for an immediate rematch against Canelo. If GGG had beaten Canelo, then, of course, there would be an immediate rematch, because Golden Boy would have no choice but to make the rematch in order to keep Canelo popular. His Mexican boxing fans wouldn’t stand for Canelo not trying to avenge his loss to Golovkin. He would have to try at least to beat Golovkin in a second fight. But with the Canelo vs. Gennady fight being ruled a 12 round draw, Canelo and Golden Boy can go through the motions of wanting to put together a rematch by telling the boxing media that they’re No.1 goal is to put the rematch with Triple G together. If Canelo and Golden Boy Aren’t serious about wanting to put a second fight together with Golovkin, they could setup the terms to where they would be so heavily slanted in Canelo’s favor that Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler couldn’t ever agree to them. In other words, it could be Canelo and Golden Boy picking the date, venue, purse split, ring size, gloves, and who comes out first. The later stuff is small compared to the venue and purse split. Just by keeping the same revenue split from the first fight, Golden Boy and Canelo would be sending a message that they aren’t interested in a second fight with Golovkin for now. I think they will take the fight eventually, like Malignaggi says, but only after he Triple G ages some more. It could be a year, maybe 2, but right now, Golovkin is still clearly too good for Canelo to be. We saw that loud and clear last Saturday. Canelo was too small for Golovkin, and he didn’t have the stamina to beat him. Fighting hard for less than 1 minute of each round isn’t going to get the job done against Golovkin.

Famous boxing trainer Freddie Roach is yet another person in the sport who saw Golovkin winning the fight last Saturday night against Canelo. While Roach saw the fight as a close one, he still felt Triple G did more than enough to deserve the 12-round decision.

“I had Triple G winning by 2 points,” said Roach to the Sports Hub. “It was a close fight. I had it 7-5. I can actually live with a draw. It turns a lot of the population off when you get a score like that,” said Roach about the 118-110 score turned in by the judge Adelaide Byrd. “The [Nevada State Athletic] Commissioner can live with that score. I say there needs to be an investigation to see where she got that score from,” said Roach.

Roach knows a lot about boxing. For him to say he saw Golovkin winning the fight over Canelo, it tells you further that GGG got a raw deal last Saturday night in his match against the popular Mexican fighter on HBO PPV.

Canelo vs. Golovkin will be televised on replay this Saturday night on HBO Boxing. The casual and hardcore boxing fans that didn’t get a chance to see the Canelo-Golovkin fight last Saturday night will be able to see it for the first time. You can expect a huge amount of upset fans at seeing the results of the fight.