By Dan Ambrose: Oscar De La Hoya says his flagship fighter Saul Canelo Alvarez is going to knockout Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin and shut his mouth to pay him back for all the trash talking he’s done about his positive tests for clenbuterol.
De La Hoya maintains that he’s not bothered by the comments from GGG about the clenbuterol issue for Canelo, but he’s going to take great pleasure when he knocks him out on September 15 in their rematch at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. De La Hoya thinks it’s the pressure from GGG having to fight Canelo again that is starting to put pressure on him, making him trash talk more for this fight than he did in the past.
“It doesn’t bother me that Golovkin keeps talking about the Clembuterol issue. I think is ridiculous at this point,” De La Hoya said via Fight News. ”He feels the pressure.”
It’s hard to know whether Triple G is feeling pressure or if he’s simply angry because he thinks Canelo, 28, is a dirty fighter due to his two positive tests for clenbuterol. What we do know is Canelo doesn’t look nearly as muscular for the September 15 fight as he did the last time he fought GGG a year ago. Canelo looked a lot more muscular for that fight. It’s unclear what Canelo is doing differently in training for the second fight with GG compared to the first fight. Canelo is now focusing on being leaner in order to improve his speed and conditioning. He tried to beat Goovkin with size last year, but that didn’t work. Canelo found out the hard way that it’s hard to perform at a high level when you added a lot of muscle in a short period of time. Bulking up works for a fighter when he’s able to score a quick knockout, but it works against them when they’re forced to fight a full 12 round fight with all the added weight. Canelo was really laboring after three rounds against GGG. Canelo can’t make the mistake of trying to fight with a lot of muscle in his future fights unless he’s facing a fighter that is known for having a weak chin like when he fought Amir Khan.
”What I think must happen is that Canelo has to go out there from the first round and try to knock him out,” De La Hoya said. ”That’s what the people want to see; Canelo coming out from the first bell and kayoing GGG to shut his mouth once and for all.”
De La Hoya is 100% correct about the boxing fans wanting to see Canelo coming forward looking to knockout Golovkin. The fans want to see Canelo fight like he normally does in his fights. Before facing GGG, Canelo had always been a come forward type of fighter, who would attempt to knockout his opponents. The only times in which Canelo deviated from his seek & destroy fighting style is when he fought Floyd Mayweather Jr., Erislandy Lara, Austin Trout and Golovkin. Those guys forced Canelo to become a boxer, and he didn’t shine in any of those fights. Canelo lost to Mayweather, and beat Trout and Lara by close 12 round decisions that could have gone either way. In the GGG fight, Canelo was given a 12 round draw.
“In this second fight the story will be different. Canelo gave Gennady a lot of respect in their first fight,” De La Hoya said. ”Now he knows that GGG hits hard but not hard enough to KO Canelo. He knows what to expect in this second meeting.”
Canelo knows that Golovkin is going to come forward and look to wear him down. By the same token,
GGG knows that Canelo is going to fight on the ropes, and move to his left to escape his pressure. If Canelo does anything different than that, it’s going to play into Golovkin’s favor because he was able to force Canelo back each time he would try and punch with him last September. De La Hoya doesn’t note that Golovkin didn’t put a lot of pressure on Canelo last time. Despite all the talk, Golovkin fought most of the fight on the outside and wasn’t trying to KO Canelo in the same that he normally does with his opponents. You can argue that neither fighter has seen the full version of their fighting styles. Canelo fought a watered down version of GGG last year. As far as Golovkin goes, he was fighting a boxer in Canelo, who fought a lot like welterweight Kell Brook and Gabriel Rosado did when they fought GGG. Brook and Rosado stayed on the move and would occasionally fight on the ropes. Rosado came after Golovkin in the 5h round and was able to land some good shots ha puffed up his eyes. However, in the 6th round, Golovkin hurt Rosado with a big uppercut. From that point on, Rosado was on the run until the fight was stopped in the 7th. Brook moved a lot and fought on the ropes against Golvokin in their fight in 2016. Brook found some success in the 2nd round when he attacked Golovkin and nailed him hard with a big uppercut. However, Brook’s success was fleeting, as Golovkin hurt him in the 3rd round with a left hook that sent him down on the canvas. Although the knockdown was waived off by the referee, it didn’t matter because Brook was shaken up by that shot and he was on the run for the remainder of the fight until his trainer Dominic Ingle had to throw in the towel in the 5th round.
“Canelo is a more complete fighter,” De La Hoya said in comparing Alvarez to Golovkin. ”He is more intelligent, he can adapt, and he is a good technician. Golovkin just likes to come forward, trying to knock you out. We know what GGG can and will do and that’s it,” De La Hoya said.
We saw Canelo box Golovkin in the first fight. For the rematch, he needs to be a lot more aggressive against GGG to make sure he has the best chance of winning the fight. Canelo will never have the reach and the stamina to beat Golovkin or any excellent boxer from the middleweight division. That’s why it’s imperative that Canelo change his fighting style to become more aggressive. We don’t know what Canelo can do against Golovkin if he brawls with him the way he did against the likes of Miguel Cotto. Who knows? Canelo might get the better of GGG and knock him out like De Hoya thinks he will. We do know that Canelo wasn’t able to beat Golovkin by boxing him last time they fought.
It sounds like De La Hoya is under-valuing Golovkin’s talent in saying that he can only come forward to try and knock his opponents out. Golovkin can box. We saw that against Canelo and David Lemieux. He was effective in boxing Canelo from the outside. After Golovkin’s experience from his previous fight with Canelo last year with the judges scoring the contest a controversial 12 round draw, it wouldn’t be prudent for him to try and box to earn a decision. I think it’s safe to say that Golovkin has lost all faith in him being able to win a 12 round decision against a popular fighter like Canelo.