By Sean Jones: Trainer Angel Garcia says Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez (49-1-2, 34 KOs) will be a different fighter with more confidence for the rematch with IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady ‘GGG” Golovkin (37-0-1, 33 KOs) on May 5th than he was on September 16th last year, because he’s not going to be coming up in weight this time, and he knows he can handle the punches from the 36-year-old Triple G this time.
Angel says Canelo fought Golovkin on a “precaution” last time, considering that he didn’t know whether he could handle the size and weight of the Kazakhstan fighter.
It’s believed by many that Canelo, 27, outweighed Golovkin on the night of the fight last September. Golovkin was weighed in by HBO before he stepped foot into the ring, but Canelo didn’t agree to it.
Canelo looked like he was in the 180s to Golovkin’s 172 lbs. Angel doesn’t realize that Canelo was coming down in weight for the Golovkin fight after having fought his previous fight against super middleweight Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, at a catch-weight of 164 ½ pounds on May 6. Canelo weighed in at 164 lbs. for the Chavez Jr. fight. We don’t know how much Canelo rehydrated to, because he wasn’t weighed in by HBO. Boxing doesn’t have a rule in place in which fighters are mandated to be weighed in before they step into the ring. It would be a good thing because it would be something the boxing fans and odds-makers would surely like to know if there’s a fighter that packs an enormous amount of weight each time they rehydrate. It might change the odds in fights if the odds-makers know that a fighter rehydrates 20 to 30 lbs. for his fights.
“They want him to win,” Angel Garcia said to Tha Boxing Voice. “If you look at the poster, they got Canelo with the Ring belt. They can never take that away from him. He’s always going to be a Ring belt champion like Danny [Garcia]. You can win the WBC, WBA, IBF, WBO, but nobody can ever take that Ring belt form you. You’re always going to be a Ring Magazine champion. Only certain guys have that. Danny got the same belt. They doing smarter selling him [Canelo] as the champion. It’s hot. I think that’s pretty good,”
Angel Garcia is talking about how Ring Magazine has Canelo still as their RING magazine middleweight champion despite him vacating his World Boxing Council heavyweight title in May 2016 to avoid a fight against Golovkin at the time. Canelo had been ordered by the WBC to negotiate a fight against then mandatory challenger GGG. But instead of taking that fight, Canelo vacated the WBC 160 lb. title and moved back down to 154 and challenged WBO junior middleweight champion Liam ‘Beefy’ Smith for his title in September 2016. Canelo stopped Smith in the 9th round on September 17, 2016. Canelo held onto the WBO 154 lb. title for 8 months before vacating it in May 2017 without ever having defended the title. Angel is incorrect about RING Magazine never being able to take the title away from Canelo. Of course, they can take the title away from him. If Canelo loses to Golovkin, then he’ll no longer be the RING 160 lb. champion.
There’s a lot of criticism that Canelo has caught from boxing fans for him still being the RING middleweight champion after the way he vacated his WBC 160 lb. title in May 2016, and then he didn’t fight in the middleweight division for 16 months until September 2017 for his fight against Golovkin. You can argue that RING Magazine should have stripped Canelo of his RING middleweight title for him failing to fight in the 160 lb. division for 12 month period. After Canelo vacated his WBC middleweight title to avoid facing Golovkin in May 2016, Canelo didn’t fight at middleweight for 16 months until his fight with GGG in September 2017. During that 16 month period, Canelo fought Chavez Jr. at super middleweight and Liam Smith at junior middleweight.
It’s unclear why RING Magazine didn’t strip Canelo of his RING Magazine middleweight title during the 16 months that he wasn’t fighting at middleweight. For all intents and purposes, the RING Magazine 160 lb. title was frozen during that 16 month period. If the RING titles don’t have to be fought on annual basis, then you get outdated champions that are no longer fighting in the division and it looks odd with them still being considered a champion. It looks strange enough that Canelo is viewed as the RING middleweight champion when you have Gennady Golovkin holding 3 of the 4 World middleweight titles with his IBF, WBA and WBC belts. For the hardcore and casual boxing fans of the sport, Golovkin is viewed as the middleweight champion, not Canelo. He’s seen as the challenger. RING Magazine has their reasons for not stripping Canelo of his RING middleweight title during his 16 months of not fighting at middleweight. It seems odd that they didn’t strip him, because he clearly wasn’t fighting in the 160 lb. weight class almost over a year and a half.
”The thing is you’ve got to knock Triple G out this time. He puts his head right there, bro,” Angel said about Golovkin sticking his head in front of Canelo while leaning forward when he tries to fight in close range. “He’s right here. The thing is the first time when Canelo fought that fight it was on a precaution. Canelo was going up in weight [Note: Canelo was coming down in weight from 164 when he fought Golovkin last September]. So when Canelo fought Triple G, he felt that Triple G was a bigger man, because he came up. So he fought that fight on a precaution at middleweight. Now he knows he can handle that, so it’s going to be a different fight, because he already knows he got over that hump. He knows that’s his weight. He’s a natural middleweight. He knows he’s got to do it,” Angel Garcia said.
Canelo’s chances of knocking out Golovkin are very slim. If Canelo goes for a knockout, he could get knocked out himself against Golovkin. Canelo will have to empty his gas tank to throw enough shots to try and KO GGG, and if he does that and fails, then he’s going to be at the mercy of the Kazakhstan fighter on May 5th. It’s going to be a different story if Canelo perches himself against the ropes in the rematch. This time Golovkin is going to hammer Canelo at will if he backs up against the ropes in the rematch. It could end up like how Golovkin stopped Grzegorz Proka in the 5th round of their fight in September 2012. Proksa tried to fight in a slick manner like Canelo was doing last September, but Golovkin attacked him to the body and backed him up against the ropes. Golovkin then dropped him with a body shot to get the stoppage win.
Angel feels that Canelo was fighting at a “precaution” against Golovkin because he wasn’t certain that he could handle the weight. I think it’s more of a case of Canelo not being sure he could handle the power of Golovkin rather than the weight. Angel seems to getting confused with weight and power. It’s the power of Triple G that Canelo was uncertain about. Canelo obviously knew he could fight at the weight, because he knows how much he weighs in comparison to Golovkin.
Canelo isn’t naturally as powerful and rugged as Golovkin. Canelo isn’t that kind of a rugged and powerful fighter like Golovkin, who is incredibly strong for his weight in comparison to the other fighters that weigh as much as him. Golovkin is pound-for-pound a stronger fighter than Canelo and the fighters that weigh the same as him at middleweight. That’s not going to change ever. Canelo will never possess the kind of punching power that Golovkin has. Canelo can load up on shots to get a lot of power, but he’s not able to hit with the same natural thudding strength that Golovkin can, because he’s not as naturally as strong as him. There’s nothing wrong with that. Canelo has his advantages in terms of hand speed, youth, defense, being the more popular fighter and the fact that he’s with the lead promoter in Golden Boy. Those are huge advantages that Canelo has going for him, especially being the more popular guy. It might have saved Canelo from losing to Golovkin last September. You hate to think that Canelo was only given a 12 round draw because of his popularity, but a lot of boxing fans believe that to be the case.
Canelo is a natural middleweight like Angel says, but I think he’s been a natural for years now. That’s not new. Canelo’s weight has been rumored to be in the 170s since his fight with Erislandy Lara in 2014. Canelo choose to fight at catch-weights in the middleweight division at 155 pounds from 2014 to 2016. Canelo fought at 155 lb. catch-weights against Lara, James Kirkland, Miguel Cotto and Amir Khan. Technically, those fights were in the middleweight division despite them being catch-weight fights at 155 pounds, and Canelo looked like a middleweight after he rehydrated.
”One of the two has got to put it in the bucket,” Angel said of Canelo and Golovkin. ”You can’t go, you’re making $14 million, then go out there and fight like a $14 million fighter. One of them has got to put it to call themselves the king of the middleweight division. You’ve got to put it in the bucket, because at the end of the day there’s going to be a time where you’ve got to give it all up. So do it now while you’re still young. Triple G is not a young bull. He’s like 36, right? Look, he’s been hit so many times in the past already, it’s just a matter of time before somebody knocks him out. It’s going to come. It’s just a matter of time. If you look at all his fights, he’s getting hit more, more, and more. He’s getting hit more. And the thing is, it’s just a matter of time,” Angel said in explaining his theory that Golovkin is going to be knocked out sooner or later because he’s getting hit more often.
Canelo didn’t come close to knocking Golovkin out last September. If Golovkin does eventually get knocked out, it probably won’t be by Canelo. Angel needs to understand that. To knockout Golovkin, it’s going to require a fighter that can put their punches together for a sustained period of time to throw 10 to 15 punches in a row without stopping and needing to take a breather. Canelo has not shown that he can do that. If you look at Canelo’s fights, he throws 1 to 3 punches, and then he leans away and starts resting from having exerted himself. Canelo’s last 2 knockouts came against fighters known for having weak chins in Amir Khan and James Kirkland.
Canelo stopped those guys with big shots rather than unloading on them with a flurry of shots. So it’s unlikely that Golovkin will be knocked out by Canelo. If anything, Canelo has the higher chance of being knocked out on May 5th, not Golovkin. But Angel is right that Golovkin could get knocked out sooner or later. But the same goes for Canelo and for Danny Garcia, Angel’s son. These guys are probably going to get knocked out too unless they play it safe and avoid the best fighters. Danny Garcia has been playing it safe for a while now by not fighting Errol Spence Jr., Viktor Postol, Terence Crawford and Shawn Porter. I guess that’s why Danny hasn’t gotten knocked out. Canelo still hasn’t fought Daniel Jacobs, Sergiy Derevyanchenko, Jermall Charlo or Jermell Charlo.
If Canelo chooses never to fight any of those fighters, then he’ll increase his chances of not being knocked out in his career. We’ll have to see what plays out with Canelo and Golovkin’s careers in terms of whether they ever get knocked out. Sometimes when a fighter doesn’t get knocked out, it’s a case of them being steered around the guys that could hurt him them and knock them out. You can say that about Canelo not fighting the Charlo brothers, Demetrius Andrade, Derevyanchenko and Jacobs. You can definitely say that about Danny Garcia choosing not to fight Postol, Porter, Spence and Crawford. Danny hasn’t been knocked out yet, but he’s also been fighting a lot of guys that he’s been padding his record against in Samuel Vargas, Rod Salka, Lamont Peterson, Paulie Malignaggi, Robert Guerrero, and Mauricio Herrera.
