By Dan Ambrose: Canelo Alvarez’s trainer & manager Eddy Reynoso says they want to face Gennadiy ‘GGG’ Golovkin for a trilogy fight to close the chapter in their rivalry. The idea is for Golovkin to come to Mexico to fight Canelo on his home turf.
At this point, Golovkin isn’t in the position to argue where the third fight with Canelo will take place. If Golovkin wants the opportunity to fight Canelo again, he’ll have to bow down to his wishes.
Canelo needs the third fight more than Golovkin
If Canelo asked for the fight to take place on planet Neptune, Golovkin would need to agree to it, or else he’d miss his chance forever. At this point, given the controversy over the first two fights, Canelo needs the trilogy match more than GGG does.
Most boxing fans feel Golovkin was robbed twice by the judges and deserved two wins or a victory and a draw. Those two fights showed that Golovkin was the better fighter of the two and had the much gas tank, as Canelo faded after five rounds in both of the contests.
Reynoso states that he wants to see what happens in Golovkin’s unification fight next month against Ryota Murata on December 29th. If Golovkin (41-1-1, 36 KOs) wins that fight, Reynoso would be interested in putting a fight together between him and Canelo that will take place in Guadalajara, Mexico.
Alvarez must beat Makabu
Reynoso didn’t mention that Canelo (57-1-2, 39 KOs) will likely need to win his title challenge against WBC cruiserweight champion Ilunga Makabu next May or June for a fight with GGG to have any realistic shot at taking place in 2022. If Canelo loses that fight, he’ll likely insist on a rematch unless he’s beaten in a one-sided manner, which is unlikely.
If you saw how poor Makabu looked in his third round knockout loss to Tony Bellew in 2016, it’s challenging to picture Canelo losing to this guy.
The fact that Makabu is one of the champions at cruiserweight is more of a product of how watered down the sport has become with the four division titles in a historically weak division.
The talented fighters around that weight tend to move up to heavyweight to chase bigger paydays rather than languish at cruiserweight and make much less money their entire careers.
Canelo, 31, will be moving up two divisions to challenge the 34-year-old Makabu for (28-2, 25 KOs) in the first half of next year in a bid to become a five-division world champion.
While some boxing fans are impressed with Canelo’s courage to go up to cruiserweight to try and capture a fifth division world title, the hardcore fans that know the sport well view it as another example of Alvarez being an opportunistic cherry-picker by selecting the weakest of the five champions in that weight class to capture a world title.
Canelo’s four-division world title wins:
- Matthew Hatton – WBC 154
- Miguel Cotto – WBC 160
- Rocky Fielding – WBA 168
- Sergey Kovalev – WBO 175
“We would like to face Golovkin for a third time to close that chapter. I think we can make it happen,” said Reynoso said via Fightnews about his desire to put together a fight between Canelo and GGG in 2022.
Golovkin arguably robbed
Canelo beat Golovkin by a controversial 12 round majority decision in their rematch in 2018. The scores were 115-113, 115-113 for Canelo, 114-114.
Canelo looked good in the first five rounds but then gassed out badly and gave away the last six to seven rounds. Hence, the fight was scored a draw by one of the judges.
This writer had it a draw because he had nothing left in the last seven rounds and was fighting on fumes, getting hurt by Golovkin, and eating jabs nonstop.
Understandably, Canelo was given the victory, though, because he was the A-side and fighting in Las Vegas, which meant Golovkin would have needed an exceptional performance to get a decision.
But if you look at the fight objectively, it was a draw or a win for Golovkin. He did appear to win seven rounds, but with the Canelo factor, you can call it a draw but not a win.
The first Canelo-Golovkin fight in 2017 was scored a 12 round draw, but the boxing world had Golovkin winning the battle by eight rounds to 4.
Dan Ambrose had Golovkin winning nine rounds to 3, as Canelo spent most of the fight running and eating jabs.
That scoring was one of the worst this writer has ever seen before, but it wasn’t surprising.
If you’d seen the woeful scoring in Canelo’s wins over Erislandy Lara and Austin Trout, the judging scores for the first Canelo-Golovkin fight were par for the course. You hate to say it, but Canelo should have at least five if not six defeats on his resume, not just the loss to Mayweather.
Golovkin deserves two wins; Lara, Trout, and Miguel Cotto earned victories as well. Canelo is undoubtedly a talented fighter, but he’s struggled repeatedly and gotten victories or draws in fights where he deserved defeats.
Canelo appeared to lose his fights with Lara and Trout but was given controversial wins. Also, in Canelo’s loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2013, one judge shockingly scored the fight a draw. Again, the Canelo factor.
“I would like for Golovkin to come to Mexico. We can make that fight happen in Guadalajara or Mexico City,” said Reynoso in talking about the trilogy match between Canelo and GGG.
“We hope to make it happen. He hasn’t mentioned Canelo’s name; he has a fight in December against Murata in Japan. We’ll see what happens in that fight, and perhaps we can make Canelo vs. GGG 3 happen.”
