By Dan Ambrose: Bernard Hopkins of Golden Boy Promotions expects his fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (49-1-2, 34 KOs) to beat IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (37-0-1, 33 KOs) by a knockout just like Andre Ward stopped former light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev by a stoppage in their rematch.
Golovkin and Kovalev are both from Eastern Europe, but that’s the only thing they have in common. Ward’s stoppage win over Kovalev on June 17 was more of a result of him having taken advantage of a flaw in his game. Golovkin hasn’t shown the same inability to take body shots that Kovalev exhibited. Golovkin does have flaws in terms of his hand speed, and his reluctance to throw body shots. Canelo couldn’t take advantage of those flaws though, being that he lacked the energy to attack Golovkin in a prolonged manner. Danny Jacobs did a far better job against Golovkin than Canelo did, and he lost to him.
Canelo didn’t come close to knocking Golovkin out. Throwing largely single pot shots punches, Canelo was only able to land one shot at a time. Canelo’s punching power didn’t carry up with him to middleweight unfortunately. If he’s going to get knockouts over guys like Golovkin, Danny Jacobs, Jermall Charlo, David Lemieux and Sergey Derevyanchenko, Canelo will need to change the way he fights.
“Canelo is going to have to look at what most people are talking about,” said Hopkins to Fighthype in talking about Canelo’s stamina problems against Golovkin. “It’s not been that he’s not in sharp condition. It could be mental, the wrong foods, the wrong reactions. It could be a balance of a lot of things that make a person feel tired. If he was tired, as people say he was, which he was and he should have been at certain points in the fight, why didn’t Triple G attack him? So why did Triple G not be the monster that we all know he is? We saw a young 24, 25-year-old Canelo find his way to not drown. Wow! I see more positive with Canelo. You don’t fight when you’re tired, but you don’t quit either. I see him getting better.
Canelo needs MAJOR help with his cardio. He’s 27, and pretty soon he’s going to be 30, and then 35 and so on. Canelo’s problems with his stamina are one of the worst I’ve seen from a middleweight. The guy clearly has cardio problems that need major work.
It’s a good question why Golovkin didn’t attack Canelo like he should have. It looked Golovkin had a different strategy in how to take away Canelo’s counter punching ability by jabbing him. Hopkins may not realize it, but the book in how to beat counter punchers like Canelo is to throw jabs down the middle. That’s how you beat a counter puncher with short arms like Canelo, and it worked, but poor judging meant Canelo was saved from a loss. The boxing world has judged the judges, and they see them as doing a poor job Saturday night.
Golovkin clearly followed a game plan in taking away Canelo’s counter punching ability, and he seemed to do a good job, as Canelo was rendered helpless around 3. For all intents and purposes, Canelo was done for the night after the 3rd. Canelo fought a little bit in the opening seconds of round 10, 11 and 12, but he went into shutdown in the last 2 minutes of each of those rounds. You couldn’t give Canelo any of those rounds because he didn’t fight hard after the first seconds. Canelo looked like he only had enough energy to fight hard for the opening seconds. Once the lactic acid in his upper body built up at the 1 minute mark in rounds 10 through 12, Canelo would turn red, and then shutdown. You could time Canelo gassing out in those rounds. That’s how bad it was. If you looked at your watch, you could see that Canelo would fade right at the 1 minute mark. He was useless after that.
” It’s kind of scary to see what he’s going to do from the Triple G fight on, because he always seems to learn and get better,” said Hopkins about Canelo. What happens when they fight again? Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev 2,” said Hopkins, implying that Canelo is going to knockout Golovkin the way that Ward stopped Kovalev in their rematch on June 17, albeit by hitting him with 3 low blows in a row.
What I saw from Canelo is a fighter that has gone downhill since his loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2013. Canelo’s stamina wasn’t good back then, but it’s gotten a lot worse. Canelo now needs to stay against the ropes for most of each round like he’s an old man. Canelo reminded me of how heavyweight Larry Holmes fought at the tail end of his career when he would stay against the ropes and fight. Canelo used to be able to stay in the center of the ring when he was younger. But at 27, he seems to be losing it.
Canelo’s future is a real question mark after the way he faded badly against Golovkin. The way I see it, if Golden Boy doesn’t go back to matching Canelo against old, out of shape and faded fighters from the past, I see him getting beaten repeatedly, as long as the judges score his fights correctly. With the spotlight that has been put on the judges that gave Canelo an undeserved 12 round draw against Golovkin, I can’t see Canelo making a career out of winning controversial decisions or getting controversial draws. I think Canelo was exposed by Golovkin. The flaws that we saw in Canelo’s fight with Golovkin are ones that other top middleweights will take advantage of to beat him. The only question I have is whether Golden Boy will continue to match Canelo against good fighters once he gets done fighting Golovkin 2 or 3 times. Does Golden Boy look to match Canelo against the best fighters in the 160 lb. division after Golovkin or do they take him backwards, selecting the weaker middleweight contenders to try and preserve his time as a moneymaker for as long as possible.
I don’t agree with Hopkins’ comparison of Golovkin to Kovalev. Just because Kovalev got stopped by Ward doesn’t mean that Golovkin will be knocked out by Canelo. That’s a simplistic way of seeing the Canelo-Golovkin rematch. Canelo is not Andre Ward. Canelo doesn’t move well like Ward, and he gasses out quickly. Ward doesn’t fade in his fights and go into shutdown after the first minute of every round. Canelo is completely different than Ward, and Golovkin is a different type of fighter than Kovalev. Golovkin has Olympic experience, and over 350 amateur fights. He’s a lot different fighter than Kovalev.
Floyd Mayweather Sr. says he saw Canelo beating Golovkin, but he’s not sure about what the score was because he only saw him win 3 clear rounds. Mayweather Sr. saws all the remaining 9 rounds were close. So in other words, it sounds like he’s not sure who won.
”I had Canelo winning the fight,” said Floyd Mayweather Jr. to Mayweather Boxing Channel. ”Triple G wasn’t doing nothing. All he was doing was walking down and throwing lazy punches. I saw the first 3 rounds. I gave them to Canelo, and some of the other rounds, I couldn’t tell you if they went to Canelo or Triple G. In the 12th round, he got his [expletive] whopped,” said Hopkins in saying Golovkin got whipped in round 12. ”Canelo won 3 early rounds. Who landed the harder punches?” said Mayweather Sr.
Golovkin was controlling the fight from round 3-12 in the eyes of this boxing writer. Canelo just couldn’t put out enough effort over the full 3 minutes of each round to give him any other rounds after the 3rd. I couldn’t give Canelo rounds where he was exhausted and just looking to land a pot shot here and there to get Golovkin off of him. You could see that the pressure that Golovkin was putting on Canelo had him rattled. Canelo looked like a guy that was purely on the defensive. Canelo reminded me of someone getting attacked by a swarm of bees. He was swatting wildly at Golovkin to try and get him to go away, but he wouldn’t. He stayed right there on top of Canelo, stinging him with jabs and single power shots to the head.
Canelo did not look like a happy camper for the last 9 rounds. I scored the fight 9 rounds to 3 in Golovkin’s favor. I didn’t see anything from Canelo after round 3. What I noticed was how tired Canelo got after the 3rd. He looked like he had trained just for a 3 round fight, which isn’t surprising given all the muscle weight that Canelo had packed on overnight. Canelo put on a lot of muscle weight during training camp. All that weight was new to him, and it tired him out after the third. It’s interesting that guys like Mayweather Sr. didn’t notice how tired Canelo was, and how he’d lost his slight edge in the last 9 rounds. I personally couldn’t give Canelo any rounds after the 3rd.
Canelo reminded me of a battery. He started off strong, and quickly lost his energy by the 3rd round. From that point on, Canelo was useless. He wasn’t fighting enough to win rounds. Canelo was fighting in spurts, trying to win rounds based on a few pot shots at the start of the round. If you were inclined to give Canelo rounds based on a short period of work in the opening minute of the round, then you were ignoring the last 2 minutes of the rounds in which Golovkin dominated him. That’s the reason why the boxing world saw Canelo lose the fight. They saw how tired he was, and how he couldn’t fight hard for the entire rounds.
