Golovkin talks fighting Andrade, and Canelo “bad blood”

By Boxing News - 03/12/2019 - Comments

Image: Golovkin talks fighting Andrade, and Canelo "bad blood"

By Aragon Garcia: Earlier on Monday in his news conference with DAZN, Gennady Golovkin commented about potential fights against WBO middleweight champion Demetrius Andrade and WBA/WBC champion Saul Canelo Alvarez. Golovkin, who is coming off of a loss to Canelo, was asked if he’d be willing to fight Andrade (27-0, 17 KOs) for his WBO title in order to earn a third fight against Canelo, and he failed to say whether he would or wouldn’t take that fight.

What was interesting about the interview, as well as Monday’s DAZN news conference in Los Angeles, was the fact that Golovkin spoke only in Russian for some reason. He’d been speaking English for ages now, but for some reason he used a translator today for all the questions asked of him. Some boxing fans might think that Golovkin was doing this so he didn’t have to deal with all the questions about his loss to Canelo Alvarez last September. By using an interpreter, GGG could dodge some questions in theory, which you can argue is exactly what he did when asked if he would be willing to fight Demetrius Andrade to get a third fight with Canelo.

Golovkin failed to say whether he’d be willing to fight the unbeaten Andrade or not. The only thing that GGG was willing to say is all fighters are dangerous. It was a non-answer by Golovkin to the question of whether he would be willing to fight the southpaw Andrade to get to the trilogy match with Canelo. GGG wasn’t willing to say whether he would or wouldn’t fight Andrade at that time.

When asked about whether he’d seen his last fight to Canelo, Golovkin said he had seen it and he didn’t want to talk about it. GGG said Canelo didn’t win their fight, but rather he was “given” the victory by the judges. Needless to say, Golovkin sounded more than a little like a bitter fighter, someone couldn’t recognize that he’d been beaten, and he wasn’t able to give Canelo his much needed kudos for having beaten him. It was disappointing to see Golovkin reduced to this level. It’s clear from listening to GGG speak, he wasn’t doing a good job of dealing with his loss to Canelo. You would have thought that Golovkin wouldn’t have mentally broken down his loss, by now, and gotten over it by seeing the mistakes he made, and how he can improve in the future.

“All the fights have danger, so there’s no such thing that there’s no dangerous fighters,” Golovkin said to Fighthype in response to a question whether he’s going to take a non-dangerous opponent for his first fight with DAZN. “We’ll look at all the fighters and never choose the fighters that are less dangerous. That’s why it’s interesting to fight on DAZN, because DAZN has all the interesting fighters,” Golovkin said.

Andrade is the toughest available fighter in the DAZN stable for Golovkin to fight in June when he returns to the ring. Golovkin can’t fight the Canelo vs. Daniel Jacobs fight in June, because those two are battling it out on May 4 in a unification fight on DAZN at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. If Canelo loses that fight, then he’ll fight Jacobs next in a rematch. The winner or the loser of the Canelo vs. Jacobs fight won’t want to get back into the ring a month later to fight GGG in June.

“Of course, I watched the fight,” Golovkin said when asked if he’d seen a replay of his fight against Canelo Alvarez. “He didn’t win the fight. He was given a victory in this fight. I don’t want to talk about how it would have went. I want to think about the next fight [with Canelo]. The next fight will be different. When we have a third fight, we’ll make it more interesting, because we know each other so well and we know how to make it interesting. I don’t have anything against him. No bad blood. We’re both athletes. We’re both professionals. What happened isn’t Canelo’s fault. I want to show people the other side of boxing, the side which is not corrupt, the side that is interesting; that is the real athletes side. That’s what I want to show,” Golovkin said.

The worst thing Canelo could do is not give Golovkin the trilogy fight that he so badly wants. If Canelo were to ignore Golovkin’s attempts at getting a third fight against him for the remainder of his career, it would leave GGG to stew on his loss for the remainder of his career. It could be difficult for GGG if he never gets a chance to avenge the loss. Nothing would change even if they fight each other again. What’s done is done. Canelo fought GGG to a standstill in their first in 2017, and then beat him in the second fight. No matter what happens in the trilogy fight, it won’t change what took place in the second fight.

See what the writer means when he says Golovkin sounds bitter about his loss. It’s too bad. You would think that with GGG’s humble attitude, he would have dealt with his loss to Canelo a lot better than he has.

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