Rios: Canelo knows Golovkin CAN’T hurt him; he’s going to beat him

By Boxing News - 02/07/2018 - Comments

Image: Rios: Canelo knows Golovkin CAN'T hurt him; he’s going to beat him

By Sean Jones: Former lightweight champion Brandon ‘Bam Bam’ Rios says Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez has already felt middleweight champion Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin’s punching power from their fight on September 16th last year, and he’s no longer worried about it because he knows he can take his best shots.

Rios says Canelo is going to throw more punches in their rematch on May 5th, and he’s not going to move around like he did last time. He’s going to stand in front of GGG and work on his game plan of outworking the Kazakhstan fighter in their fight on HBO pay-per-view. The last time, Rios predicted that Golovkin would win the fight. Rios thinks that Canelo did a great job against Golovkin, even though the boxing world thought he lost.

“I give it to Canelo this time,” Rios said to Villian Fy about his prediction that Canelo will beat Golovkin in the rematch. “I think Triple G showed him how to fight, and I think Canelo did an excellent job the first time,” Rios said.

Canelo didn’t do an excellent job like Rios says he did. Canelo got tired and appeared to lose by 8 rounds to 4 or even 9 rounds to 3. That was with Golovkin giving away the first 2 rounds to Canelo due to him wanting to start off slowly. Had Golovkin started faster, Canelo might have been limited to winning just 1 round in the fight. That’s not doing a good job. That’s doing a poor job.

Canelo fought on the ropes, and was limited to countering occasionally. Golovkin was jabbing Canelo and outworking him in every round of the fight. The 3 rounds that Canelo appeared to win were rounds where he landed a few eye catching shots.

” I think this time he already knows, and he’s ready to figure him out a little bit more,” Rios said. ”Triple G couldn’t hurt Canelo with those big shots like he was doing with the other guys and Canelo felt that,” Rios said.

It doesn’t matter whether Golovkin hurt Canelo or not. Golovkin was outworking Canelo, and showing that he had the better conditioning. Canelo was gassing out after the first minute of the rounds, and using the ropes to rest for the last 2 minutes to stall out the rounds. It was all survival stuff from Canelo from a fighter that didn’t have the conditioning needed to keep up with the pace that Golovkin was setting. Rios should know that.

If Rios has any understanding for boxing, he should have noticed that Canelo was gassing out at the 1 minute mark of each round, and just running from Golovkin in the last 2 minutes. If Rios can’t understand what happened in the Canelo-Golovkin fight, then I’m really worried his chances in his next fight against Danny Garcia on February 17th. I’d hate to see Rios thinking he’s winning rounds because he can take Garcia’s power. That’s not how you win rounds. Canelo didn’t do a great job against Golovkin last September because he didn’t get hurt by him. Canelo was gassing out and taking shots in every round. You’ve got to do more than just survive the rounds in order to win a fight.

”Canelo felt his power, so Canelo is going to win this fight,” Rios said. ”So now that Canelo felt the power and felt that he couldn’t hurt me. Now this time Canelo is going to go in there and throw more punches,” Rios said.

Canelo being able to take Golovkin’s best shots without getting hurt or knocked out doesn’t mean that he’s going to throw more punches in the rematch. Those are 2 separate things. Just because Canelo was able to handle Golovkin’s power doesn’t mean that he’s going to throw more punches in the rematch. It takes stamina to be able to throw a lot of punches, and Canelo has never had. There’s never been a fight in Canelo’s career where he’s thrown a lot of sustained punches. He’s not capable of doing that because he gets tired and needs to take a long break. The late Emanuel Steward noticed that about Canelo years ago when he first turned pro. He remarked that Canelo can only fight in brief spurts. Many ears later, nothing has changed in that regard. Now that Canelo has gotten older and heavier, he gets tired and he can’t throw sustained punches. Golovkin is Canelo’s worst nightmare with the way he attacks him. In the rematch, you can bet that Golovkin will set a fast pace that is going to leave Canelo red in the face and ready to be knocked out quickly. Of course, Canelo will revert to form and start running from Golovkin to get off of him to escape the pressure. If Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez has prepared him well this time, he’ll cut off the ring faster and not let Canelo have any space to run.

”He’s not going to move around a lot. He’s going to execute his game plan even better,” Rios said.

Rios is wrong again. Canelo won’t be able to stand in front of Golovkin without getting tired and needing to go back to the ropes to try and use his counter punching. Canelo is good briefly when he retreats to the ropes, but when he’s forced to fight hard on the ropes, he gets sloppy, his power breaks down and he’s exhausted and looking to run. I saw that repeatedly from Canelo in rounds 9 through 12. Canelo would initially land a shot or two when he was against the ropes, but when Golovkin would keep hitting him, Canelo would get tired and look to run from him. Canelo ran because he was too tired to keep up with the fast pace that Golovkin was setting.

Canelo’s heart is not able to keep up with the pace that Golovkin sets, because he’s a much better conditioned athlete and he always will be in my opinion. I rate Canelo’s stamina to be that of a fighter in his 40s, not in his 20s. Canelo has got the worst conditioning I’ve seen from a top tier middleweight. Canelo have major problems when he mixes it up with the other middleweights that push a fast pace on him, because he’s been exposed by Golovkin as not having the cardiovascular system needed to fight at a world class level.

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