By Sean Jones: Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin laughed at hearing the news that Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez is talking about training to knock him out in their rematch on May 5th. Golovkin (37-0-1, 33 KOs) says he heard the same thing from the Golden Boy star Canelo before their first fight last September about how he was going to knock him out.
The 3rd round changed everything. That’s when Golovkin went on the attack for the first time after giving away the first 2 rounds as planned. Canelo got hit hard with a big right hand from Golovkin in the 3rd. From that point on, Canelo was fighting defensively with his back against the ropes and moving laterally to escape GGG’s pressure.
”I heard this before the first fight,” Golovkin said via Villian Fy about Canelo saying he’s going to knock him out. ”He said before the same and right now again. If he wants to beat me and knock me out, it’s more interesting, because people win in boxing wins. The fight was crazy for us for both,” Golovkin said.
Whatever Canelo says about his game plan for the Golovkin rematch has to be viewed with skeptifism due to how he fought against Golovkin last time and in his fight before that against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. In the run up to the GGG and Chavez Jr. fights, Canelo talked about how he was going to go out and make it a war. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen in either case.
Whether Canelo intentionally is giving disinformation to the boxing media about his fight plans is the big question. It’s possible Canelo wants Golovkin to think that he’s going to try and knock him out, so he can confuse him when he goes outand does the exact opposite. Since Canelo has already shown in his last 2 fights that he’s not going to back up his words of war, you must believe that he’s going to fight Golovkin defensively again by running from him and throwing occasional pot shots to try and impress the judges enough to give him rounds. I don’t think it’s believable that Canelo will try and knock Golovkin out.
Canelo has already shown his stripes in his most important fights of his career against Golovkin, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Erislandy Lara, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Austin Trout. In each of those fights, Canelo was content to box and NOT to slug it out. Chavez Jr. was a different story. He was so weight drained from having melted down from 235 to make the 164 ½ pound catch-weight that he looked like a shell of his former self inside the ring.
”I not bring him my 100% power,” Golovkin said about his first fight with Canelo. ”I remember his punch. It’s not for me the same. I believe the second fight is more interesting,” Golovkin said.
Canelo will either fight it out until the bitter end to try and knock Golovkin out or he’ll follow the same game plan as the first fight and run from him 90 percent of the time. Canelo might be forced to fight defensively due to the limits of his stamina. A guy with terrible stamina like Canelo can’t force himself to fight hard against a natural middleweight. Canelo isn’t a natural middleweight and he never will be. He’s got the height off a welterweight with the weight of a super middleweight. It’s a terrible situation for Canelo. He’s too short to fight in the weight class that his body should be fighting at. He doesn’t let himself be weighed by HBO. If it was discovered that Canelo is rehydrating into the 180s, he would be receiving tons of pressure from boxing fans to move up to super middleweight. That’s where he belongs.
Golovkin says he didn’t use 100 percent of his punching power for the previous fight with Canelo on September 16th, and he means it. In looking at that fight, Golovkin hit Canelo with one big shot in the fight in round 7 that looked like it was thrown with maximum power. Canelo’s head whiplashed badly from the shot, and he took off running like a cat that had heard a firecracker go off. That punch seemed to take all the fight out of Canelo in the 7th.
Canelo is 27-years-old and in the prime of his career, but he has stamina issues that hounded him for the last 9 rounds of his fight against the 35-year-old Golovkin. The major reason the 5’8” Canelo is having stamina problems is because he’s likely losing too much water weight to get down to the 160 lb. weigh-in limit. Canelo looked considerably heavier than Golovkin in their fight last September. Golovkin weighed for HBO at 172 pounds. Canelo didn’t weigh-in for the network. The fighters have a choice of whether to weigh-in for HBO or not, and Canelo opted not to. He looked huge, at least 180, possibly as high as 185.
Losing from 20 to 25 pounds of water weight through dehydrating days before the weigh-in, it drains a fighter and we’re seeing that with Canelo. I think we saw that big time with Canelo too tired from putting all that weight back on for the fight. It’s going to be the same for Canelo in the rematch unless he gets down to 172 or lower. If Canelo can do that, he would be helping himself out for the fight. That won’t help Canelo take Golovkin’s heavy blows any better than before, but at least he won’t fade nearly as bad as he did in the first fight.
If Canelo moves up to 168, which is unquestionably the division that is more suited to his weight, he would be dealing with guys like 5’11” George Groves, 6’3” Callum Smith and 6’2” Gilberto ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez. Canelo would be giving away a lot of height and reach to those fighters, but at least his stamina would be a lot better, because he wouldn’t be cutting 20+ lbs. of weight to make the 168 lb. weigh-in limit.
Canelo looked pretty good fighting Chavez Jr. at super middleweight last year. That’s the division that would be best for Canelo now, but he’s not about to move up to super middleweight unless he gets beaten really badly by Golovkin, and then Jermall Charlo, Billy Joe Saunders, Sergiy Derevyancheko or Daniel Jacobs. I think it might take 2 defeats for Canelo to abandon the middleweight division for good. Depending on how desperate Canelo is to turn his career around, he’ll either try moving back down to 154, which would be a huge mistake for him given his weight, or he’ll do the logical thing and move up to super middleweight.
Golden Boy will probably try and steer Canelo in the direction of soft fights if/when he loses to Golovkin on May 5th. Golden Boy is lining up David Lemieux and Gary ‘Spike’ O’Sullivan for Canelo to fight after the Golovkin rematch. Golden Boy isn’t trying to setup a fight between Canelo and dangerous middleweights like Charlo, Jacobs and Derevyanchenko. They obviously are aware that Canelo is flawed and not tall enough and lacks the stamina to beat the best fighters in the 160 lb. weight class.
Once Canelo moves up to 168, it’s over with for him in terms of him competing with the best. You can argue that Canelo has never really proven that he can beat the best. He avoided fighting the Charlo brothers and Jarret Hurd when he was at 154. He only fought guys like Alfredo Angulo, Kermit Cintron, Austin Trout, Erislandy Lara, Josesito Lopez and Liam Smith. Canelo’s wins over Lara and Trout were both controversial. He lost to Floyd Mayweather Jr. Canelo wasn’t fighting the best at 154 when he finally moved up to middleweight. He appeared to be avoiding the best.
Golovkin vs. Canelo 2 will be televised by HBO pay-per-view on May 5th at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.