By Sean Jones: Trainer Nacho Beristain is leaning in the direction of middleweight champion Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin (38-0-1, 34 KOs) to prevail in his rematch with Saul Canelo Alvarez (49-1-2, 34 KOs) on September 15. Beristain feels that Golovkin’s punching power and his effective boxing will likely lead him to victory the second time around against the 5’8” Canelo. Beristain says that for Canelo to win, he’s going to need to fight the perfect fight.
There’s now two months left before the Canelo vs. Golovkin 2 rematch on HBO PPV. The fans are hoping that they don’t see a repeat of the controversial decision of the first fight. The fans want the judges to do their jobs by scoring it in a logical manner so that the fighter that appears to win is given the decision instead of a draw like last time. There was a lot of controversy from the previous Canelo vs. Golovkin fight in Las Vegas, Nevada at the T-Mobile Arena. Golovkin looked like he did enough to win the fight by four rounds, but the judges scored it a 12 round draw. If there’s not an upgrade in the quality of judges for the second fight between Canelo and GGG, we could see another controversial decision that the boxing public doesn’t agree with.
“I still think that Golovkin’s boxing and his punching still give him to prevail, but if this kid [Canelo] insists on victory, only the perfect fight can be given to him, otherwise they [Golovkin] will win,” Beristain said.
Beristain brings up some good points in mentioning GGG’s boxing and his punching power as giving him a great advantage against Canelo. Golovkin was dominating the fight once he started throwing punches in the third round. Canelo was eating jabs, swinging and missing and only landing rare pot shots. It was a boxing clinic by Golovkin. He did what Floyd Mayweather Jr. did to Canelo, but in this case, Golovkin wasn’t given the victory. Mayweather won a 12 round majority decision over Canelo. The judge that scored the one-sided Mayweather-Canelo fight a draw was ridiculed by the boxing world. The same thing happened with the judges that worked the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight. Two of them had wacky scores that made it look like they were watching a different fight. It was truly a black eye for boxing to have the Canelo-GGG fight scored a draw instead of a victory for Golovkin. It’s important that judges get it right when scoring fight, as they hurt the appeal of the sport when they fail to get it right the first time. The boxing are then forced sit through another fight between the two fighters so that the judges can get it right the second time. Hopefully that’ll be the case with the Golovkin-Canelo II fight.
”Many say that Canelo is the one who is going to adjust, but I think Golovkin will be able to do it by boxing less,” Beristain said. Golovkin is one of those fighters who does not box pretty, but it’s effective, and Canelo is one of the fighters who boxes pretty, but it’s not as effective,” said Beristain.
Beristain further says it’ll be a real victory for Mexican boxing if Canelo beats Golovkin, and would compare it to Juan Manuel Marquez’s 6th round stoppage victory over Manny Pacquiao six years ago in 2012. Beristain is hoping that the rematch between Canelo and GGG isn’t tainted by controversy with another questionable result.
Golovkin has the better chance of adapting in the rematch than Canelo due to his natural size, power, stamina and punch resistance. Golovkin has fought his entire career as a pressure fighter who overwhelms his opposition with punches. For the Canelo fight, Golovkin switched tactics by following the Floyd Mayweather Jr. blueprint in beating Alvarez by boxing him. It worked well for GGG to deserve a 12 round decision, but the judges assigned to the fight by the Nevada Commission didn’t give him the victory. Now that Golovkin has found out the hard way how difficult it is to get a decision against the popular Canelo in Las Vegas, he’s expected to adapt his game by going back to his normal slugging style to force Canelo to punch with him until he gasses out and is knocked out.
Since Canelo’s stamina is horrible, he’s going to have to come up with a different tactic for the rematch with GGG if he doesn’t want to tired out and get stopped. Golovkin is going to stay on top of Canelo this time around and not let him run around the ring to escape the pressure and get his badly needed rest breaks. Since Canelo lacks the cardiovascular system to stand and slug with Golovkin, the only thing he can do is try and stall out the rounds by holding him all night long. It would obviously make Canelo look bad in the eyes of hi boxing fans, but I believe he’ll choose that option over gassing out and getting stopped by GGG. Canelo is likely use the punch and hold style to keep Golovkin from getting his shots off, because it’s really the only thing he can do.
Golovkin has to change his game plan for the rematch because he can’t count on the judges giving him a decision if he boxes Canelo from the outside. That would be a mistake on GGG’s part if he goes into the rematch with the same game plan as the first fight.
What keeps Canelo from looking good while boxing is he tends to fight well in brief spurts of activity. Canelo will look good for a minute, and then take two minutes off to rest. With Canelo needing so many frequent rest breaks against the ropes, it makes him look not as impressive as he could be. Golovkin has slower hand speed, but his jab is much better than Canelo’s jab. Golovkin’s jab is like a power punch. Golovkin was in command of the fight against Canelo for the full 12 rounds using mostly his jab. Canelo was unable to box Golovkin because he lacked the reach to get to him. Canelo was only able to land shots when Golovkin would throw a power shot. Canelo would connect with a single counter. Canelo wasn’t able to land more than one punch at a time in the fight. In the last three rounds, Canelo came forward in the first 45 seconds and landed a few shots. After that, he resumed moving along the ropes and resting. The judges were impressed with Canelo’s brief work in the first minute of the last three rounds to give him the last three rounds. Golovkin appeared to win two out of the last three rounds.
You can’t rule out a victory for Canelo if it goes to the scorecards. After all, this is Canelo’s venue. He fights at the T-Mobile, and he means a great deal to the city of Las Vegas and the state of Nevada. Golovkin is fighting for only the second time in Las Vegas, and he’s not as important to the city. You hope that the judges picked out by the Nevada State Athletic Commission, but you can only look at what happened the last time Canelo and Golovkin fought each other last September to make a prediction about their second fight. Canelo and his promoters at Golden Boy could have selected a different venue by taking it out of Nevada, but they not only chose to bring it back to Las Vegas, they also picked the same exact venue as the first fight at the T-Mobile Arena.