By Sean Jones: Tom Loeffler says it was Saul Canelo Alvarez’s decision to have the rematch with the May 5th rematch with Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin take place in Las Vegas, Nevada. Loeffler says they received a huge offer from Madison Square Garden in New York that was bigger than the money generated last September for the fight at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Canelo wanted the rematch with Triple G to take place in Las Vegas, so Loeffler agreed to it instead of taking the huge offer from Madison Square Garden in New York.
You can argue that Las Vegas was a good luck charm for Canelo last September in keeping him from losing the fight to Golovkin on the 16th of September, 2017. Golovkin did the better work and appeared to win the fight 9 rounds to 3, but the judges that are assigned to the fight scored it a 12 round draw.
Loeffler isn’t sure whether the judges were influenced by the pro-Canelo crowd or not. Loeffler estimates that the boxing fans at ringside that night were 60 percent of Canelo’s fans, and he feels there’s a chance that the cheering by those fans might have influenced the judges. However, it’s hard to understand the judge that scored the fight 10 rounds to 2 in favor or Canelo or the judge that saw Golovkin losing the 7th round. Those 2 judges had off nights when it came to their scoring in the eyes of the boxing public.
Loeffler tried to make the Canelo-Gennady rematch in New York, but Canelo wanted Las Vegas and he ended up getting his way. Why Canelo wants the fight with Golovkin to take place in Las Vegas so badly is unclear. It would have been nice for Canelo to show a sense of fairness by letting Golovkin pick the venue for the rematch instead having things his way for a second time. At least if Canelo was given another controversial draw or perhaps a win, the boxing public couldn’t point fingers at the Las Vegas judges and say that he was saved another loss by them.
”Madison Square Garden put up a tremendous offer; more money than we generated in the first fight,” Loeffler said about the Canelo-GGG 2 fight. ”It was clear that Canelo definitely wanted to go back to Las Vegas. So I sat down with Eric Gomez of Golden Boy Promotions. Vegas put in a very strong bid so it wound up going back to Las Vegas,” Loeffler said.
The Las Vegas judges might not save Canelo this time around for the May 5th rematch. Loeffler says Golovkin is planning on knocking Canelo out to keep the judges from taking away his win for a second time. Loeffler points out that Golovkin should have won the fight by 8 rounds to 4 score if the judges had scored the fight correctly as he and Harold Lederman of HBO had it scored.
Loeffler says Golovkin will start faster in the rematch so Canelo can’t win the first 2 rounds like he did last time. Loeffler still isn’t sure what more Golovkin can do to get a decision over Canelo in Las Vegas. He says that if Golovkin should have won by an 8 rounds to 4 score, he doesn’t know how much more he needs to do for him to get the decision. 8 rounds to 4 equaled a draw in the minds of the judges that worked the Canelo-GGG fight last September. So for Golovkin to win a decision over Canelo in the rematch, he might need to win a lot more than 8 rounds.
”Everyone’s learned from the first fight. Gennady is going to start fast,” Loeffler said. ”Look, if you win 8 rounds to 4 and you get a draw, I don’t know that much more you can do to get a decision up there, but he’s going to start faster. I’m sure he’s going to work on cutting the ring off a little bit better and going to the body more. So it’ll be even less doubt,” Loeffler said.
Golovkin isn’t thinking about winning a decision. He’s thinking about knocking Canelo out because he now has found that it’s not easy to be given a decision over the highly popular Mexican star. Golovkin is going to cut off the ring on Canelo better in the rematch to keep him from running, says Loeffler. He says Canelo fought like he was Floyd Mayweather Jr. last September against Golovkin instead of the Mexican warrior that he thought he was going to see. Loeffler wasn’t expecting the defensive style that Canelo adopted for the fight. Loeffler laughed at how much running Canelo did, and he says he’s not going to be able to knockout Golovkin like’s saying if all he’s going to do is run from him for 12 rounds.
The fact that Canelo is working so hard on his cardio, it suggests that he’s going to be using even more movement that he had for the first fight. Loeffler and trainer Abel Sanchez should expect Canelo to be leaner than the first fight with GGG, because he’s putting more effort into his cardio work. There’s no way that Canelo will be able to fix his stamina problems if he comes into the Golovkin fight looking like he’s weighing in the mid-180s. That’s too much weight for the 5’9” Canelo. He needs to be a lot lighter than that for him to him to run without getting tired or fight for more than 1 minute per round. Working on cardio will improve Canelo’s stamina a little bit, but if he’s too small to stand up to Golovkin’s power and size, then he’ll lose anyway. Canelo is going to have problems regardless. If he’s too big, then he’ll gas out like last time and take a beating from Golovkin and get knocked out. If Canelo comes into the fight too light, he’ll get demolished in the same way welterweight Kell Brook did.
”Canelo says he’s going for the knockout,” Loeffler said. ”The only way you can get a knockout is to stand in the middle of the ring and fight. So I think both guys are going to raise their level. A lot of people have been demanding since the first controversial draw the first time around, and now we’ll see both guys, both Triple G and Canelo, saying they want to make it a clear winner,” Loeffler said.
Canelo hasn’t shown the willingness to stand in the pocket with guys that have the power to hurt him. Canelo stayed in the pocket against Amir Khan and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., but those guys were badly over-matched against him.
Canelo’s boxing fans frequently state that he makes changes each time he fights, but in reality he doesn’t do a lot of things different. Canelo has always used movement when fighting guys that put pressure on him. If you look bad at Canelo’s fight with Austin Trout in 2013, he was fighting just like he did against Golovkin. Canelo was moving a lot in that fight, and staying on the ropes for a prolonged period of time. The difference in that fight was Canelo stayed mostly in one spot on the ropes rather than running from one side of the ring to the other to avoid Golovkin while against the ropes. Trout was short-arming his jabs and not connecting the way he needed to for him to make Canelo take off running. Golovkin landed his jabs at will when Canelo was against the ropes. That’s why Canelo had to run, because he couldn’t reach Golovkin with his short punches. If Canelo had stayed in one spot on the ropes for 12 rounds, his face would have ended up reddened, swollen and cut up.