By Sean Jones: Oscar De La Hoya is still saying that Gennady Golovkin must fight Demetrius Andrade for his WBO middleweight title to get the trilogy fight with Saul Canelo Alvarez that he so badly wants. De La Hoya says Canelo absolutely wants to unifiy the 160 lb division if he defeats IBF champion Daniel Jacobs this Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. But De La Hoya is’t sure which direction Canelo will go in for his next fight after Saturday.
De La Hoya says there are so many different options. De La Hoya isn’t directly saying it, but it seems obvious that Golden Boy Promotions and Canelo don’t fancy taking the fight with the 6’1″ Andrade (27-0, 17 KOs). Although they want to Canelo to have the chance to fight for Andrade’s World Boxing Organization 160 lb belt, but not against him. They want Golovkin to be the one that fights Andrade to try and take the belt from the 31-year-old Providence, Rhode Island native. Maybe the southpaw Andrade has a bad style for Canelo or maybe he doesn’t bring enough to the table in terms of his popularity. Whatever the case, De La Hoya wants GGG to do the dirty work for Canelo, and it’s unclear whether he’s going to make the effort to do it. GGG just wants the Canelo trilogy fight based on his popularity, the amount of fans interest in seeing them fight each other, and how close there two previous fights were.
“It doesn’t mean that Demetrius [Andrade] is next [for Canelo if he beats Jacobs on Saturday]. It means that we’ll have go go back to the drawing board and see what fight makes sense for Canelo’s career,” De La Hoya said. “Canelo wants to unify all the titles, but then you have GGG, who’s also knocking on Canelo’s door. You have everybody. You have Charlo. You have five guys knocking on Canelo’s doors. We have to strategically think which guy makes the most sense for him and his career to continue making his legacy. So maybe GGG has to fight GGG, and the winner of that fights Canelo. We’ll have to figure it out, but Canelo does want to unify the titles.”
De La Hoya might be wasting his time thinking that he can order GGG to fight Andrade in order to get a third fight with Canelo, because doesn’t seem like something he’d be willing to do. Golovkin has given up on collecting worthless titles by fighting guys that the boxing public has no interest in seeing.
Andrade is a good, but he’s rarely fought since 2014, and doesn’t have a fan base to speak of. Golovkin would do better to pick out super middleweights like Callum Smith to fight rather than doing Canelo’s dirty work for him. If De La Hoya doesn’t think Canelo’s up to the task of beating Andrade, then he needs to forget about his dreams of unifying the middleweight division. Canelo got his WBA and WBC belts by a controversial decision over GGG last September. It was a hard fight for Canelo with him taking a lot of punishment. It’s not surprising that De La Hoya isn’t rushing Canelo back in with GGG.
It does look weak that Golden Boy wants GGG to fight Andrade instead of Canelo.
“Look, nothing’s impossible in life and much less in boxing. I’m prepared. If the KO is there, believe me, I’m going to get it. And if not, I’m prepared for whatever, including going 12 rounds.,” Canelo said.
If Canelo tries to KO Jacobs, he may live to regret it. Jacobs is going to be sitting down on his shots on Saturday, and looking to punch holes through Canelo. Jacobs’ accuracy is pinpoint, so he won’t be missing with his power shots the way that Golovkin did. If Jacobs times Canelo perfect with one of his power shots, he could take him out with a single shot or at least hurt him badly enough to finish the job. Canelo looks slower since his fight with GGG last September. Maybe the accumulation of shots that Canelo took in the championship rounds did something to him, because he looks like he’s slower and more hittable now after that fight. Golovkin almost took Canelo’s head off with an uppercut that he hurt him with in the 10th round. That shot was devastating. Canelo has never been hurt that bad from a single punch in his career. He looked like he was ready to go. If Golovkin hadn’t missed with his follow up shots, he would have gotten him out of there for sure. With Jacobs, if he gets Canelo hurt in the same way GGG did, it’ll be all over. Jacobs will flurry on him and take him like he did with Peter Quillin and Sergio Mora.
“”For me, it’s the most important. Nobody in Mexico has ever done that, won all four belts in one division, so that’s my motivation. To keep writing history,” Canelo said.
Canelo would be better off forgetting about unifying the middleweight division. If he doesn’t want to fight Andrade himself for the WBO belt, then he might as well move up up to super middleweight to go after WBA champion Callum Smith. That’s a much better fight for Canelo than fighting Andrade, which he doesn’t want to do for some reason. If Canelo beats Smith, he can then move up to 175 and go after WBO champion Sergey Kovalev and then WBA belt holder Dmitry Bivol. I personally can’t see Canelo beating either of those guys, and I don’t think he beats Callum Smith either, but you’d have to give a lot of respect if he takes those fights.