Canelo and Golovkin training hard for May 5th rematch

Boxingnews24.com

By Jeff Aranow

Saul Canelo Alvarez is looking very thick and motivated in his training video for his May 5th rematch with middleweight champion Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin. Weight-wise, Canelo looks as big as he ever has before one of his fights.

It would be in Golovkin’s best interest to forget about the distraction over Canelo’s recent positive tests for the banned drug clenbuterol and focus instead on training for their May 5th rematch at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Canelo-GGG 2 fight doesn’t look like it’s going to be canceled by the Nevada State Athletic Commission, who are investigating Canelo after his positive test for clenbuterol.

Golovkin needs to stay focused and deal with what is. The fight will happen, and whether Canelo intentionally used clenbuterol or not, Golovkin is going to have to have to fight him regardless. If the Commission was going to cancel the fight and suspend Canelo, they probably would have done so by now.

Canelo needs to get his weight right for the rematch, because his size did not help him in the first fight against Golovkin. The rematch is going to come down to a fast paced contest where the fighter with the better cardio will likely win. If Golovkin is able to push a pace that Canelo can’t sustain, then he’s going to cause the Mexican star to boil over and wind up getting outworked and quite possibly stopped.

World Boxing Council president Maurico Sulaiman addressed Golovkin’s comments about Canelo that he made on Tuesday. Golovkin said that he believes Canelo had injected a performance enhancing drug before their first fight on September 16. Golovkin didn’t say which drug that he thinks Canelo had injected. Golden Boy Promotions president Eric Gomez thinks Golovkin is getting an excuse ready in case he loses to Canelo on May 5. Gomez also said that they’ll be considering a defamation lawsuit against Golovkin for the comments he made about Canelo. Of course, a lawsuit might make it difficult to put together a third fight between Canelo and Golovkin. Golovkin is upset about Canelo having tested positive for clenbuterol, and it’s understandable that he would be angry about it and mistrustful of the excuse that his side gave about the positive test coming from contaminated meat.

“What we see is simply that Golovkin has already demonstrated that he is a human being, for the first time he is acting as a boxer,” Sulaiman said to ESPN Deportes. ”He has always handled himself differently, he has never spoken against anything and against anyone. He has the right to demand that an investigation be carried out , but I feel that he is mistaken in mixing previous subjects, that is not the GGG that we know,”said Sulaiman.

In contrast to Golovkin’s angry stance about the positive clenbuterol test from the Golden Boy Promotions star, Canelo has been quiet, not talking to the media, and just working hard in training camp to get ready for the fight. It’s obviously easier for Canelo. It might be more difficult for Canelo if Golovkin had tested positive for clenbuterol last February. If Golovkin had bulked up before their previous fight last September, and changed his physique in a fairly dramatic way, Canelo might have some things to say about it if he was the one that tested positive for clenbuterol.

The fighters are in different positions. Canelo has no reason to be angry, because Golovkin didn’t’ test positive for clenbuterol. He did. You can say it’s easier for Canelo to ignore everything that is going on around him and just train hard for the May 5th right, which is exactly what he’s doing. Golovkin is going to have to forget about the clenbuterol mess and put his mind into his training. All this stuff is out of Golovkin’s hands. It’s the Nevada Commission that will decide Canelo’s case, and there’s a good chance that the most that they’ll do is have more testing done for the Mexican star. The rematch will almost surely take place on May 5th, and GGG needs to understand that and try and forget about the clenbuterol tests, If it has Golovkin upset enough, he can always choose not to ever fight Canelo again after their May 5th rematch. That’s certainly within Golovkin’s power. He’d be hurting himself by choosing to go in that direction, however, because the money he can make fighting Canelo is a lot more than he can fighting someone else.

“He is mixing themes as a sign of the frustration that has been accumulating,” Sulaiman said about Golovkin. “Throughout all this time, in which he has had to give in to everything [in negotiations with Canelo] to be able to do the first and, now, the second fight, simply exploded as before he had not, but unfortunately mixing themes. Golovkin is a boxer who has given a lot to this sport, is an exemplary fighter, but he exploded. It never happened to him. I hope the controversy will soon be over and the greatness of a fight of this magnitude will not be taken away from him,” Sulaiman said.

It’s unlike Golovkin to get angry at his opponents before he faces them. He’s usually very calm before his fights and polite about his opponents. Golovkin hasn’t fought anyone that has tested positive for performance enhancing drugs in training for his fight, as far as I can tell. The other thing that could have set Golovkin off is the judging for the first fight with Canelo. The fight being scored a controversial draw, it made Golovkin feel that he was robbed. If the judges had given Golovkin a victory over Canelo, his promoter Tom Loeffler would have been able to ask for a bigger purse split for the rematch. Loeffler couldn’t do that though with the first fight being ruled a draw. Golovkin agreed to fight Canelo in Las Vegas, and that put him in a position where he was going into the Mexican fighters’ home territory. Golovkin agreed to this. He also agreed to fight Canelo in Vegas in the rematch. Golovkin has put himself behind the eight-ball in agreeing to things that arguably put him at a disadvantage. The accumulation of it all led to Golovkin exploding on Tuesday when he was interviewed by the boxing media and asked about his thoughts on Canelo. Golovkin didn’t hold back.

About Author