De La Hoya: Canelo has to bully the bully [Golovkin]

By Jim Dower: Oscar De La Hoya says Saul Canelo Alvarez must attack Gennady Golovkin hard from the very beginning of their fight in nine days from now, and back him up constantly because he doesn’t know how to fight in reverse mode. Canelo (49-1-2, 34 KOs) must bully GGG for him to win, says De L Hoya.

GGG and Canelo will be fighting on HBO pay-per-view on September 15 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. The second fight is expected to do better PPV numbers than the first fight due to the animosity between the two fighters following Canelo’s two positive tests for clenbuterol. De La Hoya says that he believes Canelo’s excuse of having eaten contaminated beef in Mexico. De La Hoya maintains that contaminated beef is a huge problem in Mexico, and he says half the population would likely test positive for clenbuterol if they were tested.

“In Mexico, it’s a huge, contaminated meat. If you test half the population there, they’re all going to test positive for clenbuterol,” De La Hoya said to ESPN.com.

What makes some boxing fans think Canelo was using clenbuterol as a performance enhancing drug is the way that his physique looked different for the first GGG than it had in his past fights. Canelo looked defined like that of a bodybuilder, and he’d never looked like that before or since. In Canelo’s recent media workout for the Golovkin rematch, he didn’t look nearly as muscular and cut up as he did last year when he fought GGG.

De La Hoya’s advice for Canelo to win consists of him fighting angry and going after GGG in an aggressive way that his body might not let him do, given how small he is and how poor his stamina is. Canelo would need to be totally fearless for him to fight like that. The last time he fought Golovkin, Canelo picked his spots in which to him, and he wasn’t willing to stand and trade for long.

“Canelo, I’ve never seen him train so angry,” De La Hoya said. ”I just feel it’s going to be a Canelo we’ve never seen before. I strongly feel Canelo has to come out really strong and bully the bully.Golovkin is one of those guys who keeps coming forward. He gets hit five or six times just to get his one shot, hoping he knocks you out. I think Canelo has to push him back. I know for a fact that Golovkin can’t fight going backwards,” De La Hoya said.

If both fighters are angry, it could come down to which of the two lands their power shots first for them to get a knockout. Golovkin can take a good shot, so it’s not going to be easy for Canelo to knock him out unless he’s to hit him continuously with heavy blows for 20 to 30 seconds without letup. Canelo couldn’t do that last time he fought GGG. In fact, Canelo never fights like that and never has. I don’t think he’s going to be able to attack Golovkin in the way that he needs to for him to get the knockout that he’ll to win without controversy. More than likely, the fight will follow the same routine as the first fight with Canelo starting well in the first seconds of each round, and then gassing out and letting Golovkin control the majority of the rounds. The judges will need to decide whether to score the rounds based on Canelo’s early activity in the rounds or give them to Golovkin for him controlling the majority of the rounds.

Golovkin says he learned from the previous fight with Canelo and now knows that the sport is a business.

“I now know that boxing is not just a sport. It is a business,” Golovkin said. “That is one thing I learned from the first fight. So from that I learned how to deal with this rematch. I learned how to deal with Canelo and his promoter. I did not lose that fight. I know what kind of people I’m dealing with in this rematch.”

The undercard for the September 15 Canelo-GGG2 rematch will have the following interesting fights:

– David Lemieux vs. Gary ‘Spike’ O’Sullivan

– Roman ‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez vs. Moises Fuentes

– Jaime Munguia vs. Brandon Cook

This undercard easily blows away the previous undercard for the first Canelo-GGG fight last year. That card had every little to watch.