By Sam Volz: Bernard Hopkins is predicting a total annihilation for Canelo Alvarez over Gennadiy Golovkin next month on September 17th in Las Vegas.
Hopkins isn’t mentioning the 40-year-old Golovkin’s age as being his rationale for picking Canelo, but that would certainly make sense.
Golovkin has looked slow in his last four fights since his last fight with Canelo in 2018. So unless Golovkin was intentionally holding back, he’s gotten old, which hurts his chances of defeating the younger 32-year-old Canelo.
Despite the first two Canelo-GGG fights being close affairs, Hopkins views the trilogy match as a complete slaughter, with Canelo taking GGG out within six or seven rounds with a body shot.
“I’m picking Canelo by stoppage by the sixth or seventh round,” Hopkins said to Little Giant Boxing in predicting a KO win for Alvarez against GGG.
With Hopkins, you never know if he’s choosing Canelo because he used to promote him when he was with Golden Boy Promotions. There could be some sentimental feelings there on Hopkins’ part towards the Mexican star.
It’s a safe pick for Hopkins to go with Canelo because Golovkin looked dreadful against Ryota Murata last April in their fight in Japan.
Murata worked Golovkin to the body in the first five rounds and appeared to be on his way to a victory until getting caught with a big shot in the sixth.
“I’m predicting Canelo will find his groove and then get a stoppage in the sixth or seventh round,” said Hopkins. “It looks like it will be a beat down. I think it’ll be a liver shot, and that’s going to happen in the first four rounds.”
It could very well be a “beat down” as Hopkins says, but Canelo will need to raise his game from what we saw in his loss to Dmitry Bivol last May for that to happen.
“Canelo is a better shot type of guy that wears you down, and then the head will be exposed to do what he wants to do, but that’s where it’ll start from,” said Hopkins.
“It’ll start from the bottom in bringing the head down. It will be a stoppage, but it’ll start from the body,” said Bernard.
