By Sean Jones: Trainer Joel Diaz is one of the many people that believe that IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin (37-0-1, 33 KOs) must knockout the popular Mexican star Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez (49-1-1, 34 KOs) for him to win the May 5th rematch between them.
Diaz points out that Canelo is in a better position business-wise in terms of his popularity than the 35-year-old Golovkin, and that means that if the fight is close, it’ll go to him rather than Golovkin. Diaz says the only way Golovkin can beat Canelo is by knocking him out or beating him by a decisive decision.
Diaz had Golovkin beating Canelo by 1 or 2 rounds last September in watching it live at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. However, when Diaz went home and watched the fight on TV, he saw it differently. Diaz doesn’t say who he felt won on watching it on TV, but it appears he thinks Golovkin won a wider score than he originally saw in watching it live. The cheering of the fans might have warped Diaz’s opinion in watching it in person at the T-Mobile. It was a pro-Canelo crowd until after the fight. That’s when Canelo’s boxing fans started booing him when he looked like a poor sport in saying that Golovkin doesn’t hit hard.
“I saw Triple G winning by 1 or 2 rounds,” Joel Diaz said to K.O Artist Sports about his opinion of who he felt won the Canelo-GGG fight when he watched it live at the T-Mobile Arena on September 16. “You go back home and you watch it on TV, and you see a different fight,” Diaz said.
It’s interesting that Diaz didn’t finish his thought by saying who he felt won when he watched the Canelo-GGG fight on replay at home. For a lot of boxing fans, GGG won even wider when watching the fight at home, because they saw the action better and they didn’t have to listen to the pro-Canelo’s boxing fans screaming each time he would throw a shot, which often missed. The fans weren’t cheering Golovkin as loud when he would land.
”It’s part of the game. It’s business,” Diaz said in explaining why Canelo was given a 12 round draw instead of a loss to GGG. “We want to see the fight again. In my point of view, I think Canelo will beat Triple G [in the rematch]. Why, because watching it on TV, you can see Canelo in control inside and outside. So he knows. He was never hurt. He got caught with some good punches. He got inside and fought Triple G at close range and fought him outside and was moving around and was in control. That helped him build confidence,” Diaz said.
It appears that Diaz has forgotten what he said earlier about him believing that Golovkin won by 1 or 2 rounds, and that when he got home, it was “a different fight.” If Diaz thinks Golovkin won the fight, it’s hard to understand how Canelo was “in control inside and outside.” I think Diaz is getting a little confused with his memory. Canelo was NOT in control on the outside. That was Golovkin that was controlling the action on the outside. The shorter-armed Canelo was eating jabs and pretty much helpless when Golovkin was on the outside due to his lack of reach. Canelo has short arms like David Lemieux, so he couldn’t do anything when Golovkin was fighting at range. Canelo was only able to land when Golovkin would throw power shots. Canelo would counter him at times, but he still missed most of his shots in trying to land the counters. That’s why there were only 2 or 3 good punches landed by Canelo in each round. The rest of the shots that were landed were punches from Golovkin with him jabbing and controlling from the outside. Diaz seems to forget that Canelo was doing nothing from the outside. Canelo didn’t have the height or the reach to fight on the outside, which why he was dominated from rounds 3 to 12. Canelo couldn’t do anything because he didn’t have the reach to get to Golovkin, and he also didn’t possess the stamina to fight hard for more than 1 minute of each round.
“Coming back to another fight, all he has to do is focus a little more volume of punches, staying a little more busy, and he’ll beat Triple G,” Diaz said in explaining what Canelo needs to do for him to beat Golovkin.
It’s easier said than done for Canelo to focus on throwing more volume of shots against Triple G. If Diaz remembered the fight, Canelo couldn’t reach Golovkin when he was on the outside jabbing. Canelo’s reach was too short for him to get to Golovkin. When Canelo would come forward, Golovkin would back away while jabbing. Canelo would get caught by Golovkin’s jabs and then stop in his tracks. If Canelo had kept coming forward, he would have walked into repeated jabs and it would have looked bad, because these were power jabs that Golovkin was throwing. So, there’s no tangible way for Canelo to add more volume to his punches because he lacks the reach and size to get to Golovkin. Canelo is basically a short 5’8” fighter that has moved up from welterweight to middleweight.
Canelo bulked up to fight at middleweight, but he’s still a short 5’8” guy, who is shorter than many of the welterweights like 5’9” Errol Spence Jr. If Canelo was still fighting at 147, his height wouldn’t be an issue in that weight class, but it is a problem at middleweight against guys like the 5’10 ½” Golovkin, 6’0” Jermall Charlo, 6’1” Demetrius Andrade and 6’0” Daniel Jacobs. Those are all fighters that can contain Canelo on the outside and dominate him. Canelo eats up fighters that come to him and try and fight on the inside, which is why Golovkin didn’t play his game. He stayed on the outside and jabbed Canelo all fight just as Floyd Mayweather Jr. did in his one-sided 12 round decision victory over him in 2013. Mayweather was given a victory though. Golovkin wasn’t, and there are a lot of boxing fans still wondering why the judges that worked the Canelo-Golovkin fight last September didn’t give GGG the victory. It looked like the same one-sided fight that we saw with Mayweather vs. Canelo, but for some reason the judges failed to give Golovkin his victory. Now you have Diaz saying that Golovkin has to knock Canelo out in order to win and talking about it being ‘part of the game’ and ‘business’ of boxing. That sounds sad. If the NFL was run like boxing, fans might lose interest if only the more popular teams won.
”At this point Triple G is 37, around there. He’s getting older,” said Diaz. ”Canelo is young. All he needs to do is focus on proper conditioning, because in the early rounds he was doing good, but after the 5th or 6th round, he began to fade. He got tired. He needs to maintain a pace. It could be that Triple G’s pressure got him tired too, even though he’s in great shape,” Diaz said.
Canelo got tired after round 2, not after the 5th or 6th, as Diaz maintains. Canelo does need to work on his conditioning, but I think he has been. Canelo’s conditioning problems take back to when he was 19-years-old. He’s never been able to fight hard without needing to take rest breaks. That’s something that doesn’t seem changeable at this point. Canelo has always been like that. If Canelo didn’t have great stamina when he was still very young at 19, it’s difficult to picture him suddenly being able to fight hard for 3 minutes without him turning red in the face and needing to back up against the ropes to catch his breath. Like a lot of fighters that carry around a lot of muscles, Canelo gets tired when he expends energy, because he doesn’t have the right type of physique to fight hard for 3 minutes of each round. Boxing is a cardio sport.
Canelo is built to knock guys out quickly in his fights. When that doesn’t happen, he struggles and gets tired. Canelo does alright when he has an opponent that lets him fight at a slow pace like we saw in his fight with Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. last year. The badly weight drained Chavez Jr. let Canelo fight at a snail’s pace for the full 12 rounds, so he was able to stay off the ropes most of the fight. If Chavez Jr. had pushed the pace and forced Canelo to fight hard, we would have seen him taking nonstop rest breaks in each round like he did against Golovkin. It’s not something Canelo can change in my opinion. I think he’s always going to have stamina problems during his career. The only thing Canelo can do is make sure he gets his rest breaks against the ropes and hope he doesn’t too many tall guys that can jab him to from range like Golovkin was doing, because he’ll never beat those guys without controversy. We saw Canelo involved in 3 controversial fights now where he fought taller guys and he appeared to lose to each of them. Those fights where Golovkin, Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara. Canelo didn’t have the reach to get to any of those guys, and he wasn’t given losses.
”I think Canelo [will win the rematch], because Canelo has a little bit more stretch in the business of the sport than Triple G. Triple G, there’s nothing more for him now anymore at this point,” Diaz said.
Diaz is saying that Canelo will win the rematch with Golovkin because he’s the better guy for the sport of boxing business-wise. That’s sad. It makes the sport sound like it’s rigged in favor of the more popular fighters. A lot of boxing fans already believe that. Diaz is saying what a lot of fans think about the sport favoring the more popular fighters over the less popular guys. Ultimately, the sport will be hurt if the fans don’t trust the decisions handed down by the judges. The Canelo-Golovkin is just one of many controversial decisions in the sport. These things happen all the time.
“Triple G, he needs to knockout Canelo. Let’s be realistic,” Diaz said in stating what Golovkin must do to beat Canelo. ”In the sport of boxing, the fighter at the moment is Canelo Alvarez. If it goes to a close decision again, the next fight goes the distance and it’s close, then which way is it going to go? Canelo. So he [Golovkin] either has to beat him decisively or knock him out in order to win. That’s the way I see it,” Diaz said.
If Golovkin needs to knockout Canelo to win, it puts him in a bad position, because it’s not going to be easy for him to accomplish that task. Canelo moves his head a lot, and he’s not easy to hit with head shots. When you do hit him, he tends to roll with the shots to take the sting off them. Golovkin would likely need to stand in the pocket and throw body shots all night long until Canelo wears down and leaves his head open. Eventually, I think Canelo will get knocked out by somebody, but it probably won’t be Golovkin. With the way that Golden Boy has been careful in matching Canelo, he might not ever get knocked out. Canelo never fought the Charlo brothers, Demetrius Andrade or Daniel Jacobs. If Golden Boy waits out fighters until they get old before putting them in with Canelo, which is what some feel that they did with Golovkin, or if they match him only against beatable fighters, he may never lose by knockout.
If Diaz is correct about Golovkin’s only real chance of beating Canelo being by a knockout, then he’s going to have to get ready mentally for that type of fight. In other words, Triple G will need to go back to his seek and destroy style of fighting that he used in the past, because boxing won’t work against Canelo. It works for Mayweather, another fighter friendly to the boxing business, but not for Golovkin. He’s not in that exclusive club, so it looks he only has one shot at beating Canelo and that’s to knock him out.
