By Dan Ambrose: Gennady Golovkin wants his opponent Saul Canelo Alvarez to fight with him in their rematch instead of using his feet to escape from his pressure on September 15. In their first fight, Golovkin had to chase Canelo around the ring the entire fight last year at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Canelo (49-1-2, 34 KOs) said after the fight that Golovkin doesn’t hit hard, and that he had hurt him. GGG denies that he was hurt, saying that Canelo’s shots with slaps and not hard punches. Golovkin states that he’s fought more powerful guys in his career than Canelo.
If Golovkin (38-0-1, 34 KOs) wants Canelo to fight him this time, then he’s going to need to block his escape route by staying near enough to him so that he can’t move to his left all night long. It’s a learned response from Canelo to move to his left when fighting on the ropes. He did the same thing against Austin Trout and Liam Smith when he fought them. Canelo didn’t need to stay on the ropes quite as much against them as he did fighting GGG last September. When Canelo was against the ropes, he would move to his left when the pressure became too much for him and when he needed rest breaks.
”I am happy to get at Canelo again,” GGG said. ”It is another big chance to beat him again. Of course I want to knock out Canelo. It would be nice if Canelo came to fight this time. I don’t believe what he says about how he will fight me this time. He said the same thing before our first fight. I will definitely be more aggressive in this fight,” Golovkin said.
Canelo says he wants to throw more punches and knock Triple G out in the rematch, but those words could turn out to be false from the red-haired star. Canelo showed last time that he lacked the stamina to fight Golovkin in a prolonged manner needed for him to knock him out. For boxing fans, they would just be happy if Canelo at least stood and fought half the rounds instead of just the first 45 seconds. If Canelo could fight hard for a minute and a half of each round, it would be a notable improvement over his previous fight with the unbeaten Golovkin. I don’t think that’s going to be possible though. Canelo’s problems with his engine are likely going to limit his activity in each round to around one minute. When Canelo gets tired, he needs to rest, and Golovkin is not going to be able to force him to fight unless he stays close to him.
”In the last fight I did not feel any real power from Canelo,” Golovkin said. ”Just slaps. He is not the hardest puncher I have fought. Was I upset that Canelo failed two drug tests? Yes…The excuses they gave, their attitude, and Canelo’s reaction, it showed that they have no respect for the sport or the fans. They showed their real faces. They are fakes,” Golovkin said.
Golovkin sounds like he’s still stewing over Canelo’s positive drug tests last February, as you would expect him to. The good news is that Canelo hasn’t tested positive since that time, and his physique isn’t causing boxing fans to suspect anything is out of the ordinary with him. Before GGG’s fight last September with Alvarez, many boxing were talking in social media about the change in the Golden Boy star’s physique. They were showing before and after photos of Canelo and wondering aloud whether he was on something. During last Sunday’s Los Angeles media workout, Canelo looked small, less muscular than the first GGG fight, and his physique didn’t have the bodybuilder definition of the first fight. Canelo looked like the same fighter he had been in the past. Of course, Canelo never took his shirt off during the workout, so was impossible to see how muscular he was. But from the way Canelo looked, he wasn’t looking like a bodybuilder like he had last September against GGG.
Golovkin shouldn’t dismiss Canelo’s punching power, because he caught him with a number of hard shots in their first fight that were extremely hard. In the 11th round, Golovkin was hit by a big uppercut from Canelo that backed him up briefly. There’s some disagreement among boxing fans whether Golovkin was hurt or not during that instance. But what we do know is the shot was the best one of the night by both fighters, and Golovkin backed up and looked briefly in distress.
If Canelo is able to land shots like that against Golovkin, he’s going to win the rematch. Whether Golovkin wants to admit it or not, Canelo has more than enough power to hurt him and knock him out if he’s able to put his punches to together in a sustained combination. Welterweight Kell Brook put Golovkin in trouble in the 2nd round in their fight in September 2016 after nailing him with a big uppercut. Brook followed the uppercut with three hard shots to the head of Golovkin. Brook was unable to keep punching though, as Golovkin fired back a hard right hand that caused him to back off and go into retreat. Golovkin then slowly battered Brook into submission until he stopped fighting in the 5th and had to be saved by his trainer Dominic Ingle, who threw in the towel to have the fight stopped.
If Golovkin wants Canelo to slug with him, he needs to make it a point to stay close enough to him to keep him from getting away. Golovkin will need to put up with being embarrassed in the early going of the fight by Canelo’s superior hand speed and his better inside game. Golovkin will get hit a lot in trying to KO Canelo, but that’s par for the course for any knockout puncher. To score a knockout, Golovkin will have to put his own chin on the line, which is something he wasn’t willing to do last time he fought Canelo.
Golovkin fought like he didn’t want to be embarrassed by Canelo by getting hit a lot. But what’s interesting though is that when Golovkin did finally take the fight to Canelo in the last three rounds of the fight, the Mexican star’s punches quickly lost steam and looked like slapping shots. What Golovkin showed is Canelo is only powerful briefly when he’s under a serious prolonged attack. Once Canelo gets tired after 15 to 20 seconds of a continuous assault on him, his shots lost steam and he’s slapping and no longer throwing shots with authority. Canelo is also a lot easier to hit when he’s under a prolonged assault. Golovkin will need to stay on top of Canelo and force him to fight nonstop if he wants to knock him out, because it’s not going to work if he keeps giving him breathers by staying on the outside most of the time in each round like he did last time.
”There is no such thing as a Mexican stayle,” Canelo said in talking about Golovkin’s criticism of him for not fighting with the “Mexican style” of brawling instead of like Mayweather. ”There has been many fighters from Mexico with different styles. My style is mine. I’m Mexican and that’s what is important. Maybe Golovkin uses ‘Mexican style’ to get fans, but he’s a hypocrite. If something were to happen in Mexico, he wouldn’t be there to support them,” Alvarez said.
Canelo fought the way that he needed to in order to survive for 12 rounds against Golovkin last time. That’s the fact of the matter. Canelo wouldn’t have survived a 12 round fight against Triple G last time if he had fought hard the entire time. We saw that in the final round of the fight when Canelo attacked Golovkin hard in the last 20 seconds. Golovkin clipped Canelo with a big right hand in the final seconds that had him stumbling and looking shaky. Had Canelo fought like that the entire fight, he wouldn’t have likely made out through the third round. Golovkin is too big, too sturdy and too strong for Canelo to brawl with him. Canelo, as the much smaller fighter of the two, he needs to stick with his Mayweather-esque fighting style to keep from getting worn down by the naturally bigger and more powerful Golovkin. Canelo isn’t a natural middleweight and never will be. Canelo is this era’s version of Miguel Cotto.