By Dan Ambrose: Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn predicts war in the trilogy match between Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin on September 17th at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
There’s so much bad blood between these two fighters that they’ll not hold back when they get in the ring for their long-awaited trilogy match on DAZN pay-per-view.
Golovkin (42-1-1, 37 KOs) deserves to be furious about his two fights with Canelo because he fought well enough to win at least one of them, perhaps even both.
It’s hard not to look at the first two fights and think the Nevada judges were generous to the A-side fighter Canelo when it came to scoring.
If you’re Golovkin, you have to think knockout all the way because if it goes to the scorecards, there’s an excellent chance the judges will give it to Canelo. He’s the money-man; the guy brings the fans to Las Vegas to spend their hard-earned green each time he fights in that city.
With Golovkin being 40 years old, he’s not as crucial to the city of Las Vegas as the 31-year-old Canelo.
So if there is any bias for the judges to give it to a fighter that will help the city, you got to figure that the Mexican star will be the one that gets the nod if the match is close or even if it isn’t.
Canelo is no longer invincible
“It’s a huge fight,” said Eddie Hearn to Fight Hub TV about the trilogy match between Canelo Alvarez and Gennadiy Golovkin on September 17th. “That loss [to Dmitry Bivol] really changes a lot of the people’s perception of the fight.
“Canelo had that air of invincibility about him going into the Bivol fight. I knew how tough that fight was, but everyone just presumed that Canelo was the pound-for-pound king and could go up two divisions or one division, and he just keeps on winning. He lost.
“I think that air of invincibility is gone from Canelo Alvarez for now. GGG will be looking at that. People can criticize his [Golovkin] performance against [Ryota] Murata.
“He was out for 400 days. He went to Japan to fight and started slow and then went through the gears and beat him up and stopped him. I thought it was a good performance.
“I think this fight is going to be absolutely brutal. There is no way this fight is going to go 12 rounds this time because GGG knows this is his last roll of the dice. Canelo Alvarez wants to be spiteful against GGG, and tomorrow, I want to see that at the press conference.
“I’m going to do all I can to get it out of them because they don’t like each other. So let each other know rather than a little comment in the media. There he is, tell him,” said Hearn.
It’s asking a lot to expect Golovkin and Canelo to trash talk in their kick-off press conference this Friday because that’s not their nature.
In the past, Golovkin’s former trainer Abel Sanchez was the one that did the trash-talking to create friction between him and Canelo.
Since Golovkin replaced Sanchez with Johnathon Banks, the press conferences for the small handful of fights he’s had in the last four years have been dull affairs, filled with pleasantries.
Golovkin’s opposition wasn’t about to trash talk him because he’d done them a massive favor in picking them. They weren’t about to bite the hand that feeds by saying bad stuff about Golovkin.
Hearn to instigate trash-talk
“I might not be very popular tomorrow, but I want to build this up to one of the biggest fights I’ve ever been involved in, one of the biggest fights in boxing,” said Hearn in making it clear that he plans on being an instigator for the Canelo-Golovkin III kick-off press conference on Friday.
With the reported low pay-per-view numbers for Canelo’s recent fight against WBA light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol on DAZN PPV, it’s crucial that Hearn work as an instigator on Friday. Those two are going to put boxing fans asleep with their mild verbal exchanges.
“I really think it’ll be a thriller; I think it’ll be the best one of the three. If Canelo had beaten Bivol, everyone would have said, ‘Oh, it’s Bivol.’ They always find an excuse.
“Look at the resume of Canelo Alvarez; it’s unbelievable. So, he wanted this fight. The first two were epic, two tough fights. He wanted this fight. We signed this deal before the Bivol fight, so you really had the choice.
“Do you fight GGG or do you try and rematch Bivol? The answer is, that I want to do both, but this is my chance for the GGG trilogy. People want to see it. You still get hardcore people in boxing saying, ‘Ah, I’m not that excited about the fight.’
“F*** off. Do me a favor; it is a war, and it’ll unfold on September 17th, and everyone will be watching. People keep talking about different fights being bigger. There are two worlds.
“There’s the world that you and I live in every day, which is the hardcore boxing world because that’s what we are, and then there’s the big world.
“So many big fights in the hardcore boxing world, people seem to lose sight of how big they are on a global scale. You’re talking about two icons in Canelo and GGG,” Hearn said.
Canelo wants to make a statement
“They have given us 24 rounds of brilliant entertainment, and they’re going to us not 12 more but however many it goes,” said Hearn. “I think he wants to,” said Hearn when asked if Canelo wants to make a statement against Golovkin.
“We’ll see how honest he is tomorrow. He wants to knock him out; he wants to beat him up. I think GGG, who feels like he won the first two fights, will feel like, ‘I have to do more; I have to go for the stoppage in this fight.’
“I think it’ll catch fire from the first bell, and I think it’ll be a brutal, brutal fight. I can’t see him not wanting to rematch Bivol,” said Hearn about Canelo.
