Canelo showing little respect for Golovkin

By Boxing News - 03/22/2018 - Comments

Image: Canelo showing little respect for Golovkin

By Jim Dower: Saul Canelo Alvarez’s comments made on Wednesday towards his opponent Gennady Golovkin suggests that he no longer has much respect for the Kazakhstan fighter, who is accusing him of being a drug cheat following his two positive tests for the banned substance clenbuterol.

Canelo is angry and it appears he’s no longer going to treat Golovkin with the same kind of respect that he did before their first fight last September.

Golovkin isn’t the type that gets intimidated by tough talk, however. Canelo will have to do more than just talk for him win this fight. Canelo is training on his power game right now, and that’s a good sign for him and for the boxing world. It means he’s going to go to war with Golovkin on May 5th and fight him the way he did in the last three rounds of their fight last September. In that point of the fight, Canelo stopped moving away from Golovkin and instead he began to actively go after him. Other than first two rounds, the last there were Canelo’s best in the fight. He was being met with resistance from Golovkin, but he was landing the better shots most of the time.

There’s no question that Canelo tested positive for the drug twice last February, but he says the results came from him eating contaminated meat in Mexico. Golovkin thinks Canelo used the clenbuterol to help his performance for his May 5h rematch, as well as before their first fight on September 16 last year in Las Vegas, Nevada. Canelo wants to make Golovkin pay for his comments by giving him a thrashing inside the ring on May 5th. Other than a brief remark on his Instagram on Wednesday, Canelo has been silent about the Golovkin fight. Canelo has not been speaking to the media. Golovkin has been the only one speaking to the media, and it’s put a lot of weight on his shoulders having to singlehandedly attract interest in the May 5th rematch on HBO pay-per-view. The good news is the Nevada State Athletic Commission is expected to complete their investigation of Canelo soon. If Canelo is cleared, the fight will proceed for May 5th, and he will likely start making himself available to the media for interviews about the fight.

”I’m gonna kick your [expletive],” Canelo said on his Instagram about Golovkin.

Canelo is showing Golovkin his teeth now in trash talking him, and saying what he plans on doing to him once they get inside the ring on May 5. If the fight isn’t canceled by the Nevada Commission, Canelo will need to be a different guy inside the ring in the rematch. For the boxing fans that remember the first fight, Canelo showed ability to stand and fight with Golovkin. There were only brief spurts of activity from the redheaded star, followed by a hurried exit from the pocket. It wasn’t that Canelo was afraid of Golovkin. That’s not the reason that Canelo wouldn’t fight him toe-to-toe. It was more of a case that Canelo wasn’t physically capable of standing in the pocket and trading with GGG because of his cardio inadequacies. So, when Canelo says he’s going to kick Golovkin’s backside on May 5, he may be saying something that his body isn’t capable of accomplishing. Boxing is a sport that involves a lot of movement and strenuous activity from fighters. You’ve got to have a good cardiovascular system to be successful during the long haul of the sport. Even if you’re a huge puncher, you still need to have good conditioning to beat the better fighters. What we found out last September is Canelo didn’t have the stamina to compete with Golovkin for prolonged periods of time, which is why he kept moving away from him after he would throw a few shot.

Canelo doesn’t like Golovkin’s comments about him being a drug cheat. But at the same time, Golovkin is upset that Canelo tested positive for a banned substance that in theory could help him on May 5th.
As far as the Nevada Commission’s investigation goes, they’ve reportedly interviewed Canelo already.

It’s unclear whether the burden of proof is on Canelo to prove where he purchased the contaminated meat in Mexico. If Canelo has to prove where he or his team purchased the tainted meat for him to be cleared, it could put him in a tough position if the meat turns out to be clean of clenbuterol. The Nevada Commission will likely purchase meat from the place where Canelo states that he got his contaminated meat. However, with all the time that has gone by since the Nevada Commission started their investigation, they should have interviewed immediately to get his story.

Canelo’s boxing fans say that his low levels of clenbuterol in his positive test is proof that it came from contaminated meat. Unfortunately, low levels of clenbuterol also could be the result of a fighter having gotten off the drug a week or so before, so the drug level has diminished. Low levels of a drug in itself don’t prove or disprove that a fighter ate contaminated meat. Having a hair follicle test of a fighter would be one way to prove whether he was using the drug to increase his performance.

Golovkin has every right to be upset at learning Canelo tested positive for a PED. When fighters test positive for a drug, the fights are sometimes canceled so that one guy doesn’t have an unfair advantage over another. If the Nevada Commission allows the Canelo-GGG 2 fight to continue on for May 5, they would likely reason that Canelo has tested negative in every test since the two positive tests. The fight would go on based on Canelo being tested frequently up to the point of the fight on the 5th of May. However, since there wasn’t testing of Canelo by VADA in the many months before the training camp began for him, there’s no way of knowing whether his positive tests from last February were the result of him using clenbuterol before the testing period began.

Canelo’s promoter Eric Gomez sees fear from Golovkin, and he sees that from the way that he’s playing for sympathy from the boxing world. Gomez feels that Golovkin is trying to find a way out or look for an excuse if he loses to Canelo on May 5.

WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman wants the Nevada Commission to speed up their investigation of Canelo. The slow progress the Commission is making to come to a resolution of Canelo’s case has left the fight in limbo in the eyes of many boxing fans. If only GGG, his trainer Abel Sanchez and promoter Tom Loeffler are the ones that are hyping the May 5th fight, it’s going to be difficult for the rematch to have the same kind of success in terms of PPV buys as the first fight last September.

Golovkin is seen as the good guy right now and the innocent victim by a lot of boxing fans. In contrast, Canelo is being viewed as the bad guy by many boxing fans due to his positive test for clenbuterol. Golovkin is in a strong position right now because he’s not the one that tested positive. Even though Canelo’s excuse for his positive test is because of him eating contaminated meat, there are still many boxing fans that don’t believe it. The fans see the worst. If the fight goes ahead for May 5, you’ve got the perfect good guy vs. bad guy script; Canelo assuming the theatrical role of the bad guy, with his trash talking in the promotion of the May 5th fight, and Golovkin playing the good guy victim.