By Jeff Aranow: Saul Canelo Alvarez (49-1-2, 34 KOs) chose not to fight IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin (37-0-1, 33 KOs) in an immediate rematch last December after the 2 fighters battled to an unpopular 12 round draw last September in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The 35-year-old Golovkin will have had to wait 8 months by the time he fights the 27-year-old Canelo in the rematch on May 5 on HBO pay-per-view. 8 months is the better part of a year. When you remember that Golovkin already had to wait 2 years for the first fight with Canelo last September, it comes out to 3 years that the Kazakhstan fighter has had to wait for fights against Canelo. Is this intentional on Canelo and Golden Boy’s part in making Golovkin wait – and age 3 years – for his fights with the popular Mexican star or is this just how they do business?
If Golovkin hasn’t lost anything from the 8 months he’s being forced to wait for the Canelo rematch, then it’s going to be awfully tough for the Golden Boy star to win the rematch short of another bad batch of scores like we saw last time they fought each other. Golovkin still fought like a young fighter last September. He appeared to have the better conditioning than the younger Canelo. Just based on how the 2 fighters performed, Golovkin was the younger fighter so the two health-wise in the fight.
Canelo was laboring like an old car going up a steep hill on a hot day. There a couple of occasions in the fight, I think Canelo was going to overheat and boil over. He started turning red in the face and upper body in the early rounds when forced fight harder than his body could stand. Canelo’s trainer gave him a pep talk after the 9th, letting him know how bleak the situation was.
Canelo started fighting harder in the 10th, but he was still unable to do more than fight in spurts in the first minute. Some boxing fans raved about how Canelo came on strong in rounds 10, 11 and 12. But in re-watching the fight, Canelo was still only fighting hard in the first minute of the rounds. He was gassed out after 60 seconds.
“I am ready to battle Canelo again and am happy he took this fight again,” Golovkin said. “This is the fight the world wants. This is the fight boxing deserves. I didn’t agree with some of the judges’ decisions in the first fight. This time there will be no doubt. I am leaving the ring as the middleweight champion of the world.”
Golovkin has had time to digest what he did wrong. He’s going to try to his best not to make the same mistakes as he did the last time. The only mistake Golovkin made is thinking he could win a fight by jabbing Canelo. Floyd Mayweather Jr. did that, but Golovkin wasn’t going to be able to get away with doing the same thing.
Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara both found out the hard way that Canelo can’t be beat by jabbing him and limiting him to very punches landed. Canelo still wins. Trout did the same thing Golovkin did and he lost. Golovkin must fight differently against Canelo for him to win. If Golovkin is capable of learning from his mistakes from last time, then he’ll improve.
Canelo has areas that he needs to fix for him to beat Golovkin. Canelo should stay in the center of the ring, and not fall back against the ropes like he did last time. It looks bad when a fighter is resting with their back against the ropes. It puts the judges in a situation where they look silly if they give the fighter a draw or a win when they’ve spent the entire fight with their back against the ropes. Canelo made 2 of those judges from last time look incompetent.
Canelo needs to come forward and throw combinations. Canelo did well when he threw combinations in the last 3 rounds. When Canelo did attack Golovkin, he would break off the attacks and go back to resting for the last couple of minutes. It’s as if the effort to throw a handful of punches had Canelo boiling over like an old car in need of some antifreeze. For Canelo’s sake, he needs to focus entirely on his conditioning for this training camp. Canelo doesn’t need to be huge for him to do well against Golovkin. Canelo is better when he’s in the low 170s. He’s a lot faster and he doesn’t tire as much.
Canelo still gets tired, but I don’t remember him looking so worn out like he was against Golovkin. It’s never a good idea to add a lot of muscle weight in a short period of time like we saw with Canelo in his training camp for the Golovkin fight. Canelo put on a lot of weight, and then had problems carrying it around for 12 rounds. It would have been a good idea for Canelo to put the weight on if he was fighting someone that he could knockout quickly in the early rounds of the fight, but it was a bad idea for him to pack on the weight for the GGG fight.
Canelo and Golovkin will try and clear up the controversy from last time they fought to a draw. They’ll obviously be at the mercy of the appointed judges though. If bad match of judges are assigned that aren’t able to score the fight in a logical manner, then we’ll have another outcome like last time Canelo and Golovkin fought with scores that seemed senseless with nothing to do with the actual fight that took place.
There wasn’t a lot of action in the first Canelo-GGG fight. It was Golovkin jabbing with his power jab, and Canelo looking to land one or two pot shots before dashing away to the other side of the ring to escape the pressure that was being put on him by Triple G. It wasn’t even a great deal of pressure that Golovkin was putting on Canelo. In looking at the replay, the only Golovkin was doing was standing and throwing jabs from the outside. Canelo obviously hated the jabbing, so he would take off running. Canelo wanted no part of going straight at Golovkin. Canelo was more fixated on taking off along the ropes to get away from him and his pressure.