By Sean Jones: The World Boxing Council has picked WBC middleweight champion Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin as the 2017 Fighter of the Year for his impressive performances against Saul Canelo Alvarez and Daniel Jacobs. In that respect, the WBC mirrors my thoughts in selecting GGG as the 2017 Fighter of the Year. It was an easy pick for me, as what Golovkin accomplished against Canelo and Jacobs dwarfed what my runner up Vasyl Lomachenko accomplished in beating Miguel Marriaga, Jason Sosa and Guillermo Rigondeaux in 2017.
It was a brilliant game plan that Golovkin’s coach Abel Sanchez came up with for him to beat Daniel Jacobs and Saul Alvarez. The last thing that anyone would think of was Golovkin going out and jabbing Canelo and Jacobs from the outside for 12 rounds. It was assumed that Triple G would storm forward and overpower those 2 fighters in the same way he did against Kell Brook and many of his other opponents.
Golovkin could have done that and worn both of them out. When Golovkin push the fight against Canelo, he had him turning red from exhaustion. Canelo clearly couldn’t take the pace when Golovkin would push the fight against him. Jacobs was hurt in the 4th and 10th rounds when Golovkin briefly took the fight to him. We’ll never know what would have happened if Golovkin had continued to press the attack against Canelo and Jacobs, but I tend to think it would have ended badly for both. Jacobs can’t handle steady pressure at all, as we saw in his stoppage loss to Dmitry Pirog in 2010. Pirog gleefully attacked Jacobs for 5 rounds until stopping him. Pirog looked like he was having fun the entire time. He wasn’t worried about getting hit by Jacobs. Pirog just wanted to hit him as hard as he could and for as long as he could until he collapsed onto the canvas.
Canelo looked unfit for a real fight. He had bulked up like mad for the Golovkin fight, and he was not in any kind of condition to fight a full 3 minute round. Canelo was only there to land some pot shots at the start of each round, and then move for the next 2 minutes to try and keep from getting knocked out by GGG.
Golovkin beat 2 very good fighters in 2017 with his performances against Canelo and Jacobs. Yes, I know that Golovkin wasn’t given the win over Canelo, but he beat him nonetheless. There’s no other fighter in boxing that beat that type of quality opposition during the year. Terence Crawford unified the light welterweight division, but he did it beating guys that aren’t considered great fighters in Julius Indongo and Felix Diaz. Those are certainly good fighters, but they’re not on the same level of what Golovkin accomplished in getting the better of Canelo and Jacobs.
FIGHTER OF THE YEAR: @GGGBoxing GOLOVKIN
WBC Middleweight champion defended 2 times against world-renowned champions Danny Jacobs and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez establishing his position as the number 1 pound per pound fighter of the world. pic.twitter.com/2y6XbHAr18
— World Boxing Council (@WBCBoxing) January 9, 2018
”Thank you for the Honor @WBCBoxing @wbcmoro,” said Golovkin in response to the WBC naming him Fighter of the Year.
Golovkin showing pure class here in thanking the WBC.
The judges that worked the Canelo-GGG fight scored it 118-110 for Canelo, 115-113 for GGG and 114-114.
The WBC was obviously impressed with the job Golovkin did against Canelo on September 16 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Golovkin changed his fighting style 100 percent for that fight, out-boxing Canelo from the outside in the same manner that Floyd Mayweather Jr. had done 4 years earlier. It was a magnificent performance by Golovkin, which unfortunately was unrewarded by the judges. They scored it a 12 round draw. However, the court of public opinion quickly overruled the 3 judges in seeing it as a clear victory for Golovkin. Boxing news 24 scored it 9 rounds to 3 for Golovkin. Canelo did little beyond the 3rd round. He was outworked by Golovkin. The only rounds in which Canelo appeared to win were the first 3, and that was only because Golovkin hadn’t got his offense revved up. Once Golovkin started to pressure Canelo, it was a sweep from rounds 4 through 12. Canelo tried to pressure Golovkin in rounds 10 to 12, but he was only able to fight hard for the first 45 seconds before gassing out and needing his customary rest breaks for the last 2 minutes and 15 seconds of the rounds.
Canelo paid the price for having bulked up with unnecessary muscles. Canelo looked like he had signed up for a Charles Atlas course in building his muscles for the Golovkin fight. If you saw the two fighters standing next to each other at the kickoff press conference 8 weeks before the fight and then compared that to when they stepped foot inside the ring, it was like 2 different Canelo’s. He really bulked up for the fight and looked like a bodybuilder. With all the muscles that Canelo packed on, he was literally couldn’t fight hard for more than 45 seconds of each round. Canelo seemed to forget that a large part of boxing involves cardio. Canelo looked like he trained for a fight that would last only 3 rounds. When Golovkin was still standing there after the 3rd, Canelo had no answers other than landing a few pot shots in the first minute of each round.
Srisaket Sor Rungvisai was very high up there in my personal 2017 Fighter of the Year honors for his 2 wins over Roman ‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez. However, I couldn’t give the Fighter of the Year to Rungvisai due to how discouraged Gonzalez was when entering the ring for the rematch. Gonzalez shouldn’t have been there on that night. I think it was a mistake for Chocolatito to take the rematch right away. He needed a few confidence booster type fights before facing Rungvisai a second time. Besides that, I don’t think Gonzalez belongs at 115. We saw that in his fight with Carlos Cuadras in 2016. Gonzalez doesn’t have the power or the size at super flyweight that he had at flyweight and light flyweight. Gonzalez should have moved back down to 112 after the Cuadras fight rather than staying at the weight and taking on a slugger like Rungvisai.