By Sean Jones: Gennady Golovkin isn’t entirely trustful of the judges for his rematch against Saul Canelo Alvarez this Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Despite two of the judges being different ones than the previous fight, GGG isn’t entirely comfortable. He feels that boxing is a business.
Last year in September 2017, Golovkin fought Canelo and two of the judges – Don Trella and Adalaide Byrd – turned in scorecards that didn’t reflect what took place inside the ring last September. Byrd had Canelo winning 10 rounds to 2, and Trella scored the fight as a draw at 6-6. Trella gave Canelo round 7, which was arguably the best round of the fight for Golovkin. That was a round in which Golovkin battered Canelo nonstop. Of all the rounds that were scored by the three judges, that was one that seen as the clearest round for GGG. The good news for Golovkin is Dave Moretti, a judge that scored it 115-113 for him against Canelo last year, will be working the
“No, because this is business. I believe that in my heart,” Golovkin said to the latimes.com when asked if he thinks the judges will be fair with the scoring of the fight. “It’s a very interesting situation for me, them changing all the judges. I don’t believe in it 100 percent.”
GGG’s problems in the first Canelo fight were largely his own doing. As Jermall Charlo noticed, Golovkin gave Canelo far too much respect than what he deserved. If Golovkin had gone after Canelo in a nonstop manner, he would have worn him down and knocked him out within six rounds. The only round in which Golovkin really attacked Canelo in a proper way was the 12th last year. GGG had Canelo reeling in the final seconds of the round. If Golovkin wants to knock Canelo out, then he needs to fight in the same way the entire fight. If Canelo’s stamina hasn’t improved since the first fight, then he’ll crumble quickly within the first six rounds and wind up getting stopped by Golovkin on Saturday.
Golovkin, 36, will need to make sure that he doesn’t leave it up to the judges if he wants to win the fight against Canelo on Saurday night. Canelo, 28, is saying that he plans on taking the fight to GGG to knock him out, but it just doesn’t seem likely. Canelo (49-1-2, 34 KOs) says that he was able to have success with the judges last time by fighting on the ropes, landing a few hard shots, making GGG miss and then moving to his left. Canelo fought in spurts, and that’s what you can expect him to do in the rematch on Saturday. Canelo has never been able to fight hard in a continuous manner during his career for some reason. Even at 19, Canelo was only capable of fighting in spurts. He’s now 28, and the dye I cast.
Canelo is not going to change no matter how hard he worked in training camp on his conditioning. Canelo will likely continue to use what he had success with the last time in fighting off the ropes in spurts, and focusing on making Golovkin miss with his shots to make him look bad. Canelo did a lot of that last time, as did Kell Brook when GGG fought him in 2016. In the final moments of the Golovkin-Brook fight, Brook was backed up against the ropes, not throwing any punches, and making GGG miss with punches. However, Golovkin was landing enough shots to show that the situation was dire for Brook. The British fighters’ trainer Dominic Ingle decided to throw in the towel to stop the fight because it was clear that Brook was going to get worked over had he let the fight continue for the remainder of the round. Canelo is going to fight in the same manner by posting himself against the ropes, because he doesn’t possess the stamina to fight Golovkin in a toe-to-toe manner at center ring, and he never will. Canelo isn’t built for fighting hard against anyone in boxing for three minutes. He’s limited in that way and he always has. The only time Canelo fights hard is for brief periods when
If Golovkin wants to be sure that he doesn’t wind up losing or being given another draw against the highly popular Canelo Alvarez, then he needs to make sure he does more than just jabbing him like he mostly did last time they fought. Canelo has been beaten before by a fighter that mostly jabs in Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2013, but I was a different story for that fight. Mayweather was the more popular fighter of the two. Golovkin appeared to try the same game plan that Mayweather used against Canelo, but instead of being given a victory, he had to settle for a draw. What made it look bad was the scorecard turned in by Adalaide Byrd. Scoring the fight 118-110 for Canelo was too wide for what took place inside the ring. Whether Golovkin would have won the fight if another judge had worked the fight instead of Byrd is uncertain. We’ll never know for sure. Canelo was landing the harder, cleaner-landing punches throughout the fight. Many judges score rounds for fighters that land the better shots, even when they’re being outworked and out-landed by their opponents. But in the case of Canelo, he was spending large portions of each round with his back against the ropes, fighting defensively and not working hard. It looked like Canelo was tired after the first minute of each round, and unable and unwilling to fight in the last two-thirds of the rounds. This meant that the judges that were scoring he rounds to Canelo were basically scoring the rounds based on what he did in the first minute and then ignoring the fact that he was being outworked by a huge margin in the last 2 minutes of the rounds. It looked like Canelo wasn’t fit enough to win any of the rounds after round two. Canelo’s body looked like he was in great shape in terms of the massive size he had put on for the fight, but he wasn’t able to use the muscles that he had put on.
Golovkin needs to be focusing on making sure that the judges don’t have a say so in the outcome of the fight on Saturday. One way for Golovkin to make sure he doesn’t find himself in another controversial fight is for him to focus on attacking Canelo in the way he did against Kell Brook. That means that Golovkin should forget about trying to control the fight on the outside with his jab like in the first fight with Alvarez. If the judges aren’t going to give Golovkin rounds for dominating with his jab, it means that they’re only going to be swayed by him attacking Canelo with power shots. If Golovkin can knock Canelo down three or four times in the fight, then there’s no way that they can give the fight to the popular Mexican fighter. However, if Golovkin is going to be slugging with Canelo, then he’s going to need to be willing to get countered by him, because the Golden Boy Promotions star is a classic counter puncher, That’s what he does. Canelo has always been someone that sits back and looks to land his left hand counters against mostly smaller fighters than himself at 147 and 154. At middleweight, Canelo clearly lacks the size and punching power of the big bangers like Golovkin and Jermall Charlo. Canelo is never going to be big or strong enough to stand and punch with those types of fighters. Canelo is never going to possess the stamina to fight three hard minutes in every round, and Golovkin needs to understand how limited he is. If Golovkin sees how limited Canelo is as a fighter in the 160 pound division, then he’ll attack him in the same relentless manner that he did against Kell Brook in 2016 and wind up forcing him to submit and quit. Canelo, 5’8”, is even shorter than the 5’9” Brook, but less capable of fighting hard like him. If Golovkin doesn’t give Canelo the respect that he did last time, then this should be an easy fight for him.
