Loeffler hoping Canelo & Golden Boy don’t stall on GGG rematch

Boxingnews24.com

By Sean Jones: Gennady “GGG” Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler is hoping that Golden Boy Promotions doesn’t make Triple G wait for a long time before they execute the rematch against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Golovkin and Canelo fought to a 12 round draw last Saturday night in front of a large crowd at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

While some fans saw the fight as a close one, the better portion of the boxing public saw Golovkin winning the fight 8 rounds to 4.

Loeffler expects a lot of the boxing public to watch the Canelo vs. Golovkin replay this coming Saturday night on September 23 on regular HBO Championship Boxing so they can see for themselves that Triple G beat Canelo. There were will be a lot of fans seeing the Canelo-GGG fight for the first time next Saturday.

Those are the fans that didn’t bother to purchase the fight last Saturday night on HBO PPV. A lot of the fans were already tapped out financially after spending $100 to watch the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor fight on Showtime PPV last month on August 26.

Going into the fight, Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez let the media know that he felt that his fighter would need to KO the highly popular Canelo in order to beat him. Sanchez was confident that Golovkin would be able to either knockout Canelo or beat him so bad that the judges couldn’t mess up the scoring of the fight. Apparently, Golovkin didn’t beat Canelo in a convincing enough manner to make it a judge-proof win.

“There is no question that Gennady won the fight,” said Loeffler. ”Because the world was watching and the media was covering, this time, what happens in Vegas won’t stay in Vegas. Saturday’s HBO replay will show that. There are no issues to doing a rematch. I just hope it takes Canelo and Golden Boy less time to do it than it did to make this fight. Enough drama, let’s get them back into the ring. Gennady is a true champion. He runs from no one.”

The huge amount of attention that the Canelo-Golovkin fight received from the boxing fans ended up being the worst thing for Canelo, as the news of his controversial win has spread like wildfire. The casual fans that didn’t see the fight now know that Golovkin was arguably robbed by the judges, and that one of the scores was a wacky 10 rounds to 2 score in favor of Canelo. That judge made Canelo and Golden Boy look REALLY bad, because it has a lot of fans saying the fight was fixed. Instead of the fans viewing it as a case of 3 judges that didn’t do a good job scoring a fairly easy fight to score, a lot of the boxing fans feel that there was something was out of sorts.

I don’t think Golovkin is going to have to wait 3 years to get the rematch with Canelo like it took for him to get last Saturday’s fight. Golovkin, 35, has been waiting since 2014 to fight Canelo. It took all this time for Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy Promotions to let him fight Triple G. But now that Canelo almost lost and it opens up the question of whether Golden Boy will want to make the rematch against GGG.

The last time Canelo almost lost to a fighter was in his bout against Erislandy Lara in 2014. As the boxing fans already know, Lara was never given a rematch against Canelo despite losing the fight to him by a controversial 1 round split decision.

“I think he ran a little more than I expected,” said Sanchez about Canelo. “I thought she had her scorecard filled out before she got here,” said Sanchez about the referee Adalaide Byrd, who scored the fight 10 rounds to 2 for Canelo. “I think she needs to be reviewed. She can’t be that blind. I think she needs to go back to school and learn how to judge a fight,” said Sanchez.

It’s doubtful that the Nevada State Athletic Commission will do anything about the judging from last Saturday’s Canelo vs. Golovkin fight. Even if they did do something like suspend one of the judges, it wouldn’t change the outcome of the fight. It would still be a draw.

The only thing that is on Golovkin’s side if the huge amount of fans and boxing writers that saw the fight and felt that he was robbed by the judges. If this was a fight that didn’t have the spotlight on it like it did, then there wouldn’t have been as much fuss about it. There would be a lot of complains from fans that did see the fight, but there wouldn’t be enough of an echo effect to put pressure on Canelo and Golden Boy to give Golovkin a rematch.

It’s lucky for Golovkin that huge numbers of fans did see the fight, because he could very easily end up like past Canelo opponents Austin Trout and Erislandy and be ignored by him and Golden Boy when it comes to trying to get a rematch against the redheaded star. Canelo beat Trout and Lara by controversial decisions. Both of those fighters fought well enough to deserve wins over Canelo, but the judges scored it against them. That’s one of the reasons why it was thought that Golovkin would need to knockout Canelo last Saturday in order to beat him, considering that his past track record showed that he can’t be beaten by decision unless his opponent was more popular than him in Floyd Mayweather Jr.

“It did surprise me. You can’t win a fight going away, getting hit with jabs,” said Sanchez about Canelo. “I don’t know how they judge that aspect of it, but that’s not boxing. He ran for most of the second part of the fight, and you can’t win fights that way. We did what we wanted. The first part of the fight was going to be difficult for both guys, and we were going to win going away and that’s what we thought we did. We were busier with the jab. We were busier landing the bigger shots. Canelo landed sporadic shots while running away. Harold Lederman had it 8 rounds to 4, which is what I had it,” said Sanchez.

Canelo’s movement kept him from being able to land punches. It made him look like he was running from Golovkin. That was the thing that led a lot of the boxing fans to believe that Golovkin deserved the win. Canelo was moving away from the battle, and he looked exhausted. Canelo needed rest breaks in between throwing punches. The movement enabled Canelo to partially rest, but not like before in his other fights.

Canelo usually rests in a stationary manner with his back against the ropes, allowing him to catch his breath and recover from having thrown punches. Last Saturday night, Canelo couldn’t rest. Golovkin wouldn’t allow him to recover, and the movement that Canelo used also took energy out of him. That’s why he looked so exhausted. Canelo’s cardiovascular system needs a lot of improvement before he can fight hard for 12 rounds. I don’t know if it’ll ever get good enough for Canelo to be able to fight without taking rest breaks.

“Of course I want the rematch. Real Mexican style fighters do not run from best fight, from history fight,” said Golovkin.

Golovkin did not like the movement that Canelo was using, because it kept him from fighting in the “Mexican style” that he had promised the fans that he was doing to be using in the fight.

”To paraphrase Gennady, this was a big drama score,” said Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez. “Gennady and Canelo treated us to a great event. It’s a shame they didn’t get the definitive result they deserved. It was a close fight. I thought Gennady won. You don’t win fights backing up all night.”