By Dan Ambrose: Tony Bellew thinks it would be a good idea for Canelo Alvarez to take the trilogy match with Gennadiy Golovkin in his next fight in September rather than jumping straight into a potentially disastrous rematch with Dmitry Bivol.
Canelo (57-2-2, 39 KOs) has to prove the boxing public and to himself that he’s STILL the fighter that he once was.
The 31-year-old Mexican star doesn’t look like the same guy he was in the past, and it’s not just Bivol fight where we witnessed deterioration. We’ve been seeing it in Canelo’s fights against Billy Joe Saunders, Caleb Plant and Callum Smith.
What we saw from Canelo in his one-sided loss to WBA light heavyweight champion Bivol (20-0, 11 KOs) last Saturday night was a fighter that looks flat-footed, slow, old & no longer the guy he once was 1000+ yesterdays ago.
As Oscar De La Hoya pointed out this week, Canelo has his priorities mixed up, playing too much golf and not focusing on boxing.
Canelo can play all the golf he wants after he retires, but he needs to concentrate on his profession unless he wants to keep losing.
Given the lesser opposition that Canelo has been feasting on over the last three to four years, the Mexican star may have been hiding his physical decline.
We may only be seeing it now because Canelo has finally begun fighting elite-level opposition after a four-year period since he fought Golovkin, which was the last top-rung fighter the Mexican star has faced since 2018.
“The Golovkin fight in September for all the belts at 168lbs is the perfect fight for him to prove that he’s still a dominant force in the sport, and then he can shift his focus back to Bivol,” said Tony Bellew to DAZN News about what Canelo Alvarez should do next.
“For me, the Golovkin trilogy just got a tiny bit more intriguing,” said Bellew.
The 40-year-old Golovkin might be a little too fossilized at this point in his career for us to learn whether Canelo still has it or not.
It might be a better idea for Canelo to take on a fighter a little less long in the tooth to show if he’s still the same guy that he once was. Beating what’s left of Golovkin won’t show us anything about what Canelo has left in the tank at age 31.
If anything, it’ll just be more of the same that we’ve seen from Canelo in taking on a guy that is past it. To show whether Canelo still has it, he needs to beat one of these fighters:
- David Benavidez
- David Morrell Jr
- Demetrius Andrade
- Joshua Buatsi
- Janibek Alimkhanuly
“If he chooses to go down that route [against Bivol in a rematch], then it must be at light-heavyweight again,” said Bellew.
“If Canelo is to settle this rivalry and even the score, he has to do it at 175lbs. That’s where he took his loss,” Bellew about Canelo having lost at light heavyweight to Bivol.
