By Sean Jones: Teddy Atlas is once again banging the drum for Saul Canelo Alvarez to defeat middleweight champion Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin in their rematch on May 5. Atlas is predicting a win for the 27-year-old Canelo, and he’s hitting on the same theme he had for the previous Canelo-GGG fight last September, saying that Golovkin is over and slipping.
Golovkin fought well enough to deserve a clear win, but the fight was scored a draw. Canelo fought well enough to win 3 rounds, but that’s about it. He was too tired to do more.
Atlas’s reasoning for picking Canelo to beat Golovkin in their rematch on Cinco de Mayo on May 5 is because he – once again – believes Golovkin has deteriorated and is slipping and he thinks Canelo’s youth will do the job. Moreover, Atlas believes Canelo will gain confidence from the previous fight in discovering that he can take Golovkin’s power without getting hurt. Canelo really didn’t test Golovkin’s power until late in the fight, so you can’t say that he tested Golovkin’s power.
Canelo mostly hung around on the ropes, using the time to catch his breath because he was so winded. Canelo seemed to come into the fight with a blueprint that was an exact copy of the failed blueprint used by Danny Jacobs and Kell Brook. In other words, Canelo thought he could beat Golovkin by following the same plan that the last 2 losing fighters had tried and failed at. That’s not exactly smart of Canelo, is it? If it’s Canelo’s trainers Chepo and Eddy Reynoso that told him to follow the Brook and Jacobs blueprint, then he needs to start thinking about finding better trainers, because those guys failed. They also failed for the game plans for Canelo’s fights with Erislandy Lara, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Austin Trout, because he deserved losses in all 3 of those fights in my estimation.
“In the rematch, I’m going to go the other way. I’m going to pick Canelo, because he [Golovkin] is slipping,” Atlas said via Boxing Ego. ”There’s no doubt about it, and Canelo has the upside. He’s the younger guy. He’s going to gain confidence from this one. He wasn’t sure he could handle the size and strength. Now he is sure he can handle it,” Atlas said.
I have a feeling that Golovkin is going to knockout Canelo this time. Golovkin has had a lot of time rest in the 8th months since the last fight.
Canelo didn’t go after Golovkin when he was fresh in the first 8 rounds of their fight on September 16 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Canelo waited until the later rounds in the 10th, 11th and 12th before trying to rally. I don’t think it would have worked out well for Canelo if he went straight into the teeth of Golovkin’s offense while he was still fresh. It’s easy for Atlas to say that Canelo will gain confidence and walk Golovkin down, but the reality is Canelo is a short guy at just 5’8”, and he doesn’t have good stamina and he probably never will. Short fighters like Canelo lack the reach to get to the taller guys. Golovkin isn’t tall for the middleweight division at 5’10 1/2″, but he’s tall compared to Canelo.
Canelo can’t fight hard for any amount of time without needing rest breaks, and his arms are too short for him to come forward without getting nailed. Canelo is built a lot like Phil Lo Greco, a junior middleweight that Amir Khan will be fighting on April 21. Canelo and Lo Greco are like copies of each other in terms of their height, reach and size. They’re little tanks that do well when their opponents let them get close or when they can counter after missed punches from their opponents.
”I think he’s going to be more consistent from an offensive standpoint in this rematch, and I think Canelo will win the fight, and I think he’ll win the fight easy,” Alas said.
Atlas seems to be talking without remembering the previous Canelo-GGG fight. It was a frustrating fight for Canelo, because he was reliving the same type of experience that he had in his loss to Mayweather. In the Mayweather fight, Canelo was helpless on the outside, unable to counter him because he was throwing jabs all night long. Canelo didn’t possess the reach to get to Mayweather, and he was unable to land his shots. When Canelo did come forward, Mayweather would hit him with a jab and move away. The difference between the Canelo-Golovkin and Mayweather-Canelo fight was the judging was better for the Mayweather fight, except for one judge that scored that fight a draw. The judging for the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight was very poor. Canelo got away with one in that fight, because he clearly lost.
Even Atlas admitted afterwards that he thought Canelo lost the fight. The entire press row for the Canelo vs. GGG fight had Golovkin winning. Atlas is really going out on a limb by saying that Canelo wins the fight easy. Canelo lost the last fight to Golovkin by 4 to 6 rounds in the eyes of a lot of boxing fans. How do you go from losing a fight by that margin to winning the fight easy? I don’t see it possible Canelo to win like that. Even if Canelo does win, it won’t be easy. It’s going to be a hard fight in which Canelo will take a lot of punishment, and perhaps get knocked down from a body shot once or twice. I think it’s going to be a lot harder fight for Canelo than it was the last time, because Golovkin knows now what he’ up against in trying to beat a popular fighter like Canelo by a decision. Golovkin will be looking to knock Canelo out so he won’t have to deal with the judges again. You’d like to think the judges will make sure they bend over backwards to score the fight in a logical manner this time, but I have serious reservations that Golovkin will be able to win if the fight goes to the scorecards.
”I don’t know if he [Golovkin] got old at that moment [he fought Daniel Jacobs], but as I said a few moments ago, I think he’s been slipping for a while,” Atlas said. But I have to qualify that by saying I thought he was overrated. But how much is slippage and how much was it that he was overrated,” Atlas said.
It says a lot about Golovkin that a fighter that is slipping at 35 was still able to beat Canelo last September and end up robbed in the eyes of the boxing public. What does that say about Canelo? I think it suggests that Canelo is limited in what he’s capable of doing at 160. Canelo is a good fighter with fast hands, but he’s short at 5’8”, and he struggles against rangy fighters that use their reach on him. Canelo is more like a welterweight in terms of reach. He’s packed on a lot of muscle in moving up to middleweight, and he probably will outweigh Golovkin by 10 to 15 pounds on May 5th. But the height and reach for Canelo is still the same as it was when he was fighting at welterweight. Canelo hasn’t grown taller. He’s still short, and that’s why he’s going to always have problems against fighters that jab and limit the amount of power shots that they throw at him. Counter punchers like Canelo need their opponents to throw power shots and combinations so they can hit them with counter shots. When they instead throw jabs, it puts them in a helpless situation where they’re eating jabs all night. Canelo was out-boxed by Golovkin last time, and he’ll likely be out-boxed again. Whether the judges will score the fight in a similar way as last time is unknown. I think it’ll be bad for Canelo if he appears to lose again and is given another draw or if he’s a victory he doesn’t deserve.