By Sean Jones: Golden Boy promotions will need to think hard if they want a rematch between their star fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez against middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin, because the second fight will be much tougher for their No.1 bread winner than it was in the first fight last Saturday.
According to Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez, they plan on putting the pressure on Canelo much earlier in the fight from the 1st round to wear him down quicker. Sanchez feels that Golovkin didn’t pressure Canelo hard in rounds 1 and 2 last Saturday, and he wants it to be different when/if there’s a rematch.
Right now, it’s still unclear when a second fight between Canelo and Golovkin will be taking place.
Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler isn’t sure if Golden Boy wants a second fight. Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya said that they want the rematch, but then Canelo threw a monkey wrench into the works by saying he doesn’t want to fight for the remainder of the year. Canelo had a hard time inside the ring, and looked like he was ready to be stopped on more than one occasion due to the fatigue. The set of judges picked out by the Nevada Athletic Commission turned in 3 widely different scores that seemed to be all over the place. The judges scored the fight a draw. The boxing world is laughing at the scores and seeing the scoring as biased in favor of Canelo. Golovkin is viewed as the true winner of the fight. Canelo is seen as the popular guy that was saved from a loss by the 2 of the judges that turned in the odd scores.
“The 13th round will be a continuation,” said Abel Sanchez to Fighthub in talking about the Canelo vs. Golovkin rematch. ”It’s just a matter of putting the pressure on from the beginning a little earlier, and trying to wear him down a little more. I think we gave him a couple of rounds at the beginning that we shouldn’t have. Canelo ran for the last part of the fight, so it was difficult to catch him,” said Sanchez.
The rematch will probably take place on May 5 next year on Cinco de Mayo, and it’s likely that Canelo and Golden Boy will insist on fighting in Las Vegas. Some boxing fans might not like the idea of Golovkin going back to the city where he was arguably robbed last Saturday with the judges scoring the contest a 12 round draw instead of a clear 12 round unanimous decision to Golovkin.
It comes down to Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler. If he negotiates in a firm way and is ready to walk away if he doesn’t get a fair deal this time, then he can have the rematch take place in New York or California. It’s not a good sign that Loeffler is saying he’d be interested in staging the Canelo-GGG rematch at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. That’s a venue that would greatly favor Canelo, because Texas is right next door to Mexico. The boxing crowd would be firmly behind Canelo if the fight were to be staged in Texas. It would be better for Golovkin to fight Canelo in New York or California if he wanted more of his own fans to attend instead of the crowd being mostly fans of Canelo.
It’s doubtful that Canelo will be able to improve his stamina enough in the rematch for him to avoid gassing out again after round 3, and winding up getting dominated by Triple G. Canelo’s stamina issues have followed him all throughout his boxing career, and they don’t figure to be something that he can fix by doing more cardio work. It would help Canelo if he lost 10 to 15 pounds of body building muscle he packed on for the fight.
Canelo was too big for him to fight hard for more than 20-30 seconds of each round. All that muscle that Canelo packed on was the kind of weight that works only if you plan on trying to score a fast knockout in the first 3 rounds. Canelo didn’t have the power, reach or the stamina to land enough shots to hurt Golovkin. Canelo’s past knockouts have largely been a product of him landing a high number of blows to wear down his opponents before finally stopping them. For Canelo to do that, he needs to land a lot of shots. Canelo couldn’t do that against Golovkin because he had the reach on him, and he was able to lean away from the shorter punches that he was throwing.
“Gennady wants a rematch because this left an unsatisfied taste,” said Loeffler to skysports.com. “Canelo said he won’t fight until May but we have to see if he wants a rematch. Gennady wants to fight before May but, if they commit to a rematch, we’ll have to see if that makes sense.”
Golovkin and Loeffler would do well to insist on the rematch with Canelo taking place in New York or California the next time. I don’t think it’s a good idea for them to back to Las Vegas to fight Canelo there. Going into the fight, there was a huge imbalance in terms of Canelo having fought 7 times in Vegas and Golovkin fighting for the first time. When you have a fighter that means so much to a city like Canelo does to Vegas, I think you can argue that it puts his opponents at a HUGE disadvantage when it comes to the scoring of a fight. If Golovkin and Loeffler are willing to chance it a second time by going into Canelo’s home turf to fight him in Vegas, then that’s their choice. I don’t think it’s a smart one, but it’s up to them to learn or not learn from the past.
If Golovkin ends up losing a controversial decision the next time, Canelo can then move on like he did after his questionable decision wins over Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara. Those guys both wanted rematches, and neither of them got one from Canelo. The rematch clause in the contract for the Canelo-GGG fight goes just one way and that’s in Canelo’s favor. He can choose whether he wants to fight Golovkin or not. Golovkin, the champion, doesn’t have any say so. That has got to be one of the oddest things that I’ve ever seen in boxing.
Golovkin came into the Canelo fight as the IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion, and yet it was Canelo who had the rematch clause that he, as the challenger, could execute or not. It was completely backwards to how it normally is when a champion defends against a voluntary challenger, which Canelo was in this case. Canelo wasn’t Golovkin’s mandatory challenger. He was just a popular fighter. Loeffler should have negotiated a lot harder in my opinion for the rematch clause to be a two-way thing, and he should have negotiated to have the fight staged in a different city. Vegas is a nice city, but when you have a fighter in Canelo that has fought 7 times in that city, it’s not the smartest thing to fight there if your fighter has never fought in Vegas.
“We wouldn’t be hesitant about coming back to Nevada but we’d be more selective with the officials that were assigned,” Loeffler said.
If Golovkin is going to fight Canelo in Vegas again, then needs to be more assertive and discerning when it comes to the judge selection. Abel Sanchez said he had issues with Adalaide Byrd being one of the judges for the fight last Saturday. Loeffler must not have made a huge protest about her being one of the judges, because she worked the fight and turned in a scorecard of 118-110 in favor of Canelo. That comes out to Canelo winning 10 rounds to 2. If you’ve ever seen a fight where one guy wins 10 rounds against his opponent, it’s usually embarrassingly one-sided. Last Saturday’s fight wasn’t one-sided. It was competitive, but Golovkin was the one doing the better work in 8 of the 12 rounds. Canelo was taking rest breaks frequently in every round, but especially rounds 4-10. Canelo fought like an old, weary fighter that couldn’t force his body to work hard. In looking at Canelo labor around the ring, it was difficult to believe that he was the younger fighter at 27 compared to the 35-year-old Golovkin. People age at different rates, and Canelo seems to getting old fast when it comes to his stamina.