By Sean Jones: Eddy Reynoso has been training Saul Canelo Alvarez since he first turned pro in 2005, and he believes that he’s going to hand Gennady Golovkin his first defeat of his career when they fight each other in 14 days from now on September 15.
According to Reynoso, he re-watched Canelo’s previous fight against GGG from a year ago, and he says noted how slow Golovkin was, and that he had no clue what to do when he was faced with pressure from Canelo. The fight wound up as a 12 round draw, but Reynoso saw enough flaws in Gennady’s game from watching the fight to know that Canelo can win the rematch.
Canelo will get his second shot at trying to beat the unbeaten IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Golovkin (38-0-1, 34 KOs) when they face each other on the 15th of September on HBO pay-per-view at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. It won’t be the same set of judges as last time that scored it a controversial 12 round draw. One of the judges Dave Moretti from the first Canelo-Golovkin fight will be back, but the other two – Glenn Feldman and Steve Weisfield – will be different. The referee will be different as well. Bendy Esteves Jr. will be the third man inside the ring on September 15.
In the first fight, Kenny Bayless worked, and there were complaints from some boxing fans that he warned GGG for no reason after he hit Canelo in the back. Canelo had been turning his back to Golovkin when he would see him preparing to throw body shots. Bayless failed to notice this tendency from Canelo, because if he had, he would have given him a warning to stop turning his back to GGG.
“We studied the Golovkin fight many times and we saw that he is very slow, very slow,” Reynoso said to Fightnews.com. ”The more we studied him, the more flaws we see in him. He seems to be slow and dumb when going forward. He is slow going forward and he doesn’t know what to do when you push him back.”
The thing that you can criticize about Golovkin about his first fight was the way that he gave Canelo far too much respect that he rated. Golovkin didn’t seem to realize how superior he was to Canelo in the punching power, reach and stamina department. Instead of Golovkin unloading on Canelo in the same way he had against guys like Kell Brook, Willie Monroe Jr., Marco Antonio Rubio and Daniel Geale, he fought him like he was attempting to defuse a landmine that was about to go off. The way this played out was Golovkin not throwing enough punches, and waiting far too long before he would throw a shot. GGG looked worried about getting countered, and this kept him from turning the fight into the war that he needed it to be for him to knockout the poor stamina-plagued smaller fighter Canelo.
It wasn’t until Golovkin stopped being so timid about throwing punches late in the fight where he started wail on Canelo and the fight become very one-sided. Golovkin controlled rounds 3 through 12. Canelo might have done enough to win the 11th by showing some activity in the first minute of the round. If you look at the fight objectively, Canelo was getting worked over by Golovkin in the last nine rounds of the fight, and he wasn’t doing enough to win the rounds due to his poor conditioning. You can put the blame for that entirely on Canelo’s trainers Eddy and Chepo Reynoso’s shoulders, as they allowed him to bulk up in putting on a lot of muscle weight during the last part of the training camp, and he couldn’t fight hard with the added weight. There was a failure on the Reynoso’s part to get Canelo to back off with his muscle-building, because it was clear from watching him that he couldn’t fight hard for more than 45 seconds of each round with all the muscles that he’d packed on. This should have been noticed by the Reynosos during training camp, because they had to have seen how red in the face and tired Canelo would get when he would exert himself for more than 45 seconds. Were Eddy and Chepo too preoccupied with interviews and such to notice that his stamina was not where it needed to be for him to be ready for GGG?
“Golovkin can’t get any better, because he hasn’t fought in over a year just like Saul. You can’t call the Vanes bout a real fight. Vanes was just a punching bag, there was no fight,” Eddy said. “A fighter at 36 years of age can’t learn anything new.”
GGG will likely win the rematch with Canelo if he forces the Mexican star to battle in every second of each three-minute round. If Canelo is forced to fight without his customary rest breaks, he’s going to gas out and lose. Golovkin has the chin, stamina and the punching power to force Canelo to fade early in the fight. However, Golovkin will need to change his mindset from the first fight against Canelo by not being so selective with the punches that he throws. That was the biggest mistake that Golovkin made. As I mentioned, Golovkin was waiting around for the perfect time to let his shots go. Golovkin was much more effective when he just threw his punches without thinking, because he was forcing Canelo to fight back, and he didn’t have the stamina, power or the natural size to fight in that way.
Does Golovkin need to learn anything new for him to beat the 28-year-old Canelo in the rematch on September 15? That’s the major question. It seems to many boxing fans that all Golovkin needs to do for him to beat Canelo is to go back to what he’s done in the past in his previous fights, and that’s to pressure nonstop and throw a lot of punches. GGG doesn’t need to learn anything per say. He needs to go back to doing what he’s always done and not give Canelo the respect that he gave him in the first fight. In looking at the first fight, Golovkin gave Canelo fits when he got angry and attacked him hard in the 7th round after he had been put in a head-lock and hit in the head in the previous round. Canelo got away with fouling Golovkin in the 6th when he put him in a headlock and reached around his back at smacked him in the face. The referee Kenny Bayless did nothing about the foul, which should have resulted in a point deduction. An angry Golovkin tore into Canelo in the 7th round, hitting him with huge shots and making him look bad. What was surprising is referee Don Trella scored round 7 for Canelo. He was the judge that scored the fight a draw at 114-114. Trella saw something from Canelo that made him give him the round, even though he was battered for three minutes. Golovkin would have won the fight if Trella had given the 7th to him instead of Canelo.
Reynoso is correct in some ways in dissecting Golovkin’s performance from the last fight. He was coming forward too slowly at times, and failing to cut off the ring on Canelo, who was always going in the same direction when he was looking to escape Golovkin’s pressure. Canelo was always going to the left. It wouldn’t have been hard for Golovkin to quickly move to his right to intercept Canelo’s patch and force him into a dog fight. Golovkin can definitely improve when going on the attack. Instead of Golovkin stalking and waiting ages before throwing a shot, he needs to launch his punches and stop worrying about what’s coming back.