By Logan Garcia: Trainer Abel Sanchez blames Gennady Golovkin’s defeat to Saul Canelo Alvarez on him taking the 12th round off last Saturday night in their rematch. Sanchez says if Golovkin had won the 12th round, then he would have beaten Canelo (50-1-2, 34 KOs).
Two of the judges had Canelo winning the 12th round with one judge scoring it for GGG. The fight was scored 115-113, 115-113 for Canelo and 114-114. Canelo won the match, and captured Golovkin’s WBA/WBC middleweight titles. Sanchez wants a third fight between them, and he feels that it’s the best match out there for both guys. Due to the closeness of the fight, Sanchez feels that Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy Promotions will want to put a third fight together.
Sanchez is suddenly saying a lot of nice things about Canelo, which seem out of the norm for him. Up until last Saturday, Sanchez had been downgrading Canelo for the last year in talking about his defensive way of fighting in the previous bout with Golovkin in September 2017, and his two positive tests for clenbuterol. After the fight last Saturday, Sanchez was smothering Canelo with love, and coming across like he’s being nice in order to get a third fight. I don’t think it’s going to work if that’s Sanchez’s plan. Golden Boy Promotions has other fish to fry for Canelo like Daniel Jacobs, Jaime Munguia and Billy Joe Saunders. The boxing public already saw Canelo fight Golovkin twice. It’s time to move on for Canelo.
As far as GGG taking the 12th round off, as Sanchez says he did, it wasn’t in Golovkin’s ability to win the 12th round. No matter what Golovkin would have tried, he wasn’t going to win the 12th. It wasn’t like GGG didn’t try and win the 12th. It was that Canelo came out quickly in round 12, determined to win it by fighting hard, throwing combinations and countering GGG each time he threw something at him. It was a close round, but Canelo finished strong in landing a lot of hard left hooks that caught Golovkin each time he would get in range to throw something. Golovkin’s defense was not there. Canelo couldn’t touch Floyd Mayweather Jr. with his left hooks and right hands during most of the fight, but he was able to hit GGG last Saturday whenever he wanted. There’s obviously a difference between GGG’s willingness to throw power punches compared to Mayweather’s, but it was still hard to miss out easy to hit the Kazakhstan fighter was.
”I told Golovkin in the 11th and 12th, I needed him to win both rounds,” Sanchez said to Fighthub. ”I thought it was a close fight. I told him I needed both rounds, and I think he took off the last round. He didn’t do enough to win it convincingly. If this fight was a wipeout, I’d say it wasn’t a possibility. This fight was a one-round fight,” Sanchez.
Golovkin shouldn’t have left it up to the 11th and 12h rounds if he wanted to win the fight. If you want to win, you’ve got to fight hard in the earlier rounds instead of letting Canelo build up a huge lead like he did. Golovkin was breathing hard and not letting his hands go in the way that he needed for him to win the fight. It looked like Golovkin’s conditioning wasn’t what it should have been for him to win the fight. Golovkin was supposed to have had the superior stamina of the two, but it didn’t look that way.
”100 percent,” Sanchez said when asked if Canelo has improved from the fighter he was a year ago. “This is the Canelo we saw in 40 previous fights except the Golovkin first fight. Canelo fought in Mexican style and won in Mexican style. If you think Canelo is a superstar, he fought to a one-round fight. In the last round, if one judge had it [for Golovkin, then he wins]. Two judges had it for Canelo and one judge had it for Golovkin. If Canelo is a superstar, then you beat a superstar if you win the last round,” Sanchez said.
This was the Canelo that had been dominating everybody since his loss to Mayweather. That’s who Canelo was last Saturday. Sometimes Canelo appears to try and fight off the ropes like Mayweather used to do, and that doesn’t seem to work well for him. He does a lot better when he comes forward and fights as the aggressive. One of these days, it’s going to work against Canelo if he goes on the attack against the wrong guy, but GGG isn’t the guy that is going to ever give him any problems. Canelo showed in the fight last Saturday that he has his number and that he’s too good for Golovkin.
”I think if Tom [Loeffler], Eric [Gomez of Golden Boy Promotions], Oscar [De La Hoya] and Golovkin can get together to iron out an agreement, then we’re going to see a fight in May of next year,” Sanchez said. ”They should because it was a close fight. There isn’t a fight out there that can equal this,” Sanchez said about a third fight between Canelo and GGG.
If there’s going to be a third fight, then it’s likely going to be on Alvarez’s terms with Golovkin needing to take a much smaller percentage split than in the first two fights. Golovkin lost his bargaining chips with his loss of his WBA and WBC middleweight titles. The only thing Golovkin has now is his name, which took a hit after his last two fights against Canelo. It wouldn’t be surprising if Golden Boy offers GGG a 75-25 purse split. Golovkin got a 70-30 split for the first fight with Canelo last September, but that was when he held the IBF, WBA and WBC middleweight titles. The belts are all now gone, and that’s going to make it tough for Loeffler to negotiate a good deal for the rematch if Golden Boy is even interested. Canelo wouldn’t commit to a rematch with Golovkin after the fight last Saturday. Canelo said he would leave it up to the boxing fans to decide whether he should fight GGG again. Right now, there are few fans demanding a third fight. The fans aren’t saying who they want to see Canelo fight next. If it’s not going to be Golovkin, then it will need to be someone like the winner of the Daniel Jacobs vs. Sergiy Derevyanchenko or the winner of the Billy Joe Saunders vs. Demetrius Andrade fights. Golovkin needs to go back to the drawing board and start winning fights again because he’s looked bad in his two matches with Canelo.
“We’re disappointed that we didn’t get the victory, but we had three good judges,” Sanchez said about the Canelo vs. GGG 2 fight. “I think Canelo deserves all the credit for taking the victory. He’s a champion. We’re not ashamed of what we did in the ring. It was a one-round fight. Hopefully, they rest up and plan another one in May of next year. I thought we won. We’re biased obviously. We can’t cry every time we don’t get a decision,” Sanchez said.
Sanchez is basically admitting that Golovkin lost the fight. By Sanchez not complaining about the judges’ decision, he’s sending a message that he approves of the decision. If Golovkin’s own coach doesn’t disagree with the decision by the judges in a strong way, then that sends a message to the boxing fans that he approves of their decision and that he thinks his own man Golovkin lost. GGG was backing up the entire fight, trying to get away from Canelo. In the mid to late rounds, Golovkin was even circling he ring and tying up Canelo in a clinch. Canelo didn’t like the holding from Golovkin, and he made him pay by hitting him with body shots when he would try and hold. Canelo wasn’t giving Golovkin any respect inside the ring. Sanchez comes across like he’s intentionally trying to appease Canelo and Golden Boy Promotions so that he can get a third fight for GGG. That’s a bad look on Sanchez’s part. If he thinks his man Golovkin won, then he should be complaining loudly and being an advocate for his fighter instead of showing appeasement by agreeing with the decision and smothering Canelo with compliments by saying how good he was and how he’s improved. To hear Sanchez talk, it almost sounds like he’s auditioning as one of the backup coaches or Canelo. He obviously couldn’t take over as Canelo’s main coach because he’s got Eddy Reynoso in that capacity. If it’s not broke, then don’t fix it.
Absolutely,” Sanchez said when asked if it was a fair decision. “Anything less than that would be taking away from the great victory by Canelo.”
Sanchez’s constant praise of Canelo sounds so syrupy. It looks so obvious from Sanchez that he’s working hard trying to say enough nice things to get Canelo and Golden Boy to give Golovkin another chance. I think work against Sanchez. With the appeasement that he’s showing, he looked too much like a defeated trainer. Why should Canelo waste time fighting a guy he dominated in such a convincing manner for a third time? Golovkin only won two rounds on my scorecard, and I was being very kind in giving him those two rounds [9th and 10th]. 11-1 is closer to what we really saw last Saturday. Golovkin was totally dominated by Canelo. Yeah, some of the rounds were close, but they were all Canelo rounds in my book. Golovkin did just enough to lose the rounds. Canelo was always coming forward the entire fight
”I wasn’t surprised,” Sanchez said about Canelo fighting aggressively in coming forward the entire fight. “I told Golovkin that. He fought the fight that fans expected him to. Golovkin didn’t do some of the things that we had worked on in the gym tonight, but I thought he had done enough to earn a close victory. We had a lot of success fighting against David Lemieux the same way. He had 350 amateur fights and 40 pro fights. He [Golovkin] knows how to box. Did I want him to do something different? I thought the fans and himself would benefit from fighting Canelo. There were moments that he took off that I wasn’t particularly happy. We’re on the outside. He’s on the outside and sees things that we don’t see,” Sanchez said about Golovkin,” Sanchez said.
Sanchez should have changed things up for the rematch by having Golovkin fight aggressively like he said he was going to do. But instead he’s admitting that Golovkin was using the same game plan that he used for his fight with David Lemieux three years ago in 2015. This was the same game plan that Sanchez had Golovkin using for his first fight with Canelo. What kind of trainer has his fighter use the same game plan when it didn’t work the first fight? Sanchez should have had Golovkin fight aggressively like he said he was going to do instead of fighting passively.
“I was imploring him to attack more, but maybe he saw some openings on the outside,” Sanchez said. ”They both fought to a one-round fight. If you thought Canelo looked great, they fought to a one-round fight. Both of them fought great. Today, he won,” Sanchez said about Canelo. “If he [Golovkin] did everything that we asked him to, is it a different fight? I don’t know. He fought to a one-round fight, so I can’t complain. “
It sounds like Sanchez is throwing Golovkin under the bus for him not doing the things he supposedly needed to in order to win the fight. Instead of it being a talent thing, which it really was, or Sanchez admitting that he should have done a better job training GGG, he says implored him to attack and that he didn’t do everything that he was asking him to. I don’t think it would have mattered if Golovkin did everything that Sanchez wanted him to. Canelo was too good for him, and he would have adapted to anything GGG could have done to make it a closer fight.
