By Sean Jones: The World Boxing Council will present a special belt to the winner of next month’s rematch between Saul Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin on September 15. Canelo (49-1-2, 34 KOs) vs. Golovkin (38-0-1, 34 KOs) will be awarded the Adolfo Lopez Mates belt.
The winner of the fight can hold it over their heads. It’s a beautiful belt, but it’s unknown whether there’s a sanctioning fee attached to the belt. Hopefully this isn’t another draw like the first fight. It’s unclear who gets the WBC’s special Adolfo Lopez Mates belt if it’s another tie between Canelo and Golovkin. It’s a different set of judges this time, so that at least minimizes the chances of another draw.
Golovkin has had the WBC middleweight title in his possession since May 18, 2016. GGG captured the belt after Canelo vacated it upon being ordered by the WBC to defend it against Golovkin. Canelo gave up the WBC title once in defeating Amir Khan.
Former heavyweight champion Chris Byrd says that Canelo doesn’t get enough credit for fighting off the ropes in last September’s fight against Golovkin. Byrd thinks Canelo did a superb job fighting on the ropes, and he agrees with the 118-110 score turned in by judge Adalaide Byrd in favor of Canelo last year. Adalaide was criticized nonstop by boxing fans for her scoring the fight to Canelo 10 rounds to 2. Chris Byrd agrees with that score, which is kind of surprising. He feels that Canelo totally dominated GGG. Unfortunately, that’s not how the boxing public saw it. They saw Canelo eating jabs while perched on the ropes, and then having to flee from that spot because he was getting hit too much. Canelo wasn’t effective when Canelo was jabbing him repeatedly while he was backed against the ropes.
“This fight is about the scoring,” Byrd said to ES News Reporting. “Triple G, I love his tenacity coming forward bringing it, but how many fights did I win fighting off the ropes. Almost every heavyweight fight, I had to fight off the ropes. I lost four heavyweight fights. That’s all I have to tell you. The ropes are part of the ring,” Byrd said.
It didn’t work well for Canelo when he was fighting on the ropes against Golovkin, because he was getting hit with a lot of jabs. The success that Canelo did have late in the fight was when he finally got off the ropes and attacked Golovkin. That was after Canelo’s trainers Chepo and Eddy Reynoso both gave him a wake-up call, telling him that he was behind in the fight against Golovkin and he needed to go on the attack. If Canelo had stayed on the ropes like he’d done in the first nine rounds, he would have lost the fight. Don’t get me wrong. Canelo still appeared to lose the fight, but he did better when he started to attack GGG beginning in the 10th.
What Byrd fails to say is fighting on the ropes didn’t work well for him when he tried that bit against Ike Ibeabuchi, Wladimir Klitschko and Alexander Povetkin. Those guys pounded Byrd and knocked him out. They took full advantage of Byrd when he fought on the ropes. The guys that Byrd did beat while fighting off the ropes were mostly lesser fighters, who didn’t possess the talent to beat him no matter what part of the ring he was at. In looking at Byrd’s record, the fighters he was able to successfully defeat while fighting on the ropes were guys that were often old, flawed or injured.
”Canelo is on the ropes. It’s not because he forced him on the ropes,” Chris Byrd said. ”He stayed on the ropes and he slipped, slipped and slipped, so you’ve got to give him credit for that. He got no credit. So they killed Adalaide Byrd over that,” Byrd said about the judge that scored the fight to Canelo by a 10 rounds to 2 score for the GGG fight. “I’m like, this is what I see,” Byrd said in agreeing with Adalaide. When asked if Byrd agreed with the 118-110 score in Canelo’s favor, he nodded his head and smiled.
Byrd giving Canelo credit for fighting off the ropes appears to him wanting to see his own style being validated. The fact of the matter is, Canelo mostly didn’t do well when he was fighting off the ropes. The only time Canelo did well when he was against the ropes is when Golovkin would occasionally look to slug with him, and he would miss and/or get countered. Golovkin had a lot of success when he was jabbing Canelo when he was backed up against the ropes. During those times, Canelo would run to his left along the ropes to escape the punishment he was taking. It looked bad, like Canelo realized that he wasn’t doing well fighting off the ropes, so he would run away.
It’s obvious that Canelo’s plan for the Golovkin fight was to fight on the ropes like he did against Austin Trout after he was hurt by a body shot from him in the 7th. Canelo tried to fight on the ropes against
“Triple G, him picking it up, it can give you rounds,” Byrd said in giving Golovkin some credit for pressuring Canelo. ”He brings you pressure and he does things that are so slick. They didn’t give Canelo credit for what he did off the ropes. That’s great. When guys go to the ropes, they’re scared. He goes onto the ropes and he’s comfortable,” Byrd said.
Canelo didn’t look all that comfortable against the ropes against GGG. He looked more like he wanted to be there because he was tired and he didn’t have the engine to fight in the middle of the ring.
Former WBO heavyweight champion Lamon Brewster think Golovkin is going to beat Canelo in the rematch on September 15, because he knows he can’t hurt him. Brewster feels that Golovkin could have stopped Canelo in the first fight if he had gone on the attack earlier in the contest last September.
“Absolutely, because Triple G has lost all fear, because he knows Canelo can’t hurt him, and if he had started early, he might have been able to stop him,” Brewster said to ES News Reporting.
