Canelo: I beat Golovkin by 2 points [last September]

Boxingnews24.com

By Sean Jones: 5 months after dueling to a controversial 12 round draw against the middleweight division’s best fighter in Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin on September 16, Saul Canelo Alvarez (49-1-2, 34 KOs) is still under the belief that he deserved to win the fight by 2 rounds in their mega-fight on HBO PPV at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Canelo, 27, says he’s training harder for the May 5th rematch against the unbeaten Golovkin (37-0-1, 33 KOs), because he wants to make the fight more “convincing” than it was the last time they fought last year. That fight was anything but convincing for the Golden Boy Promotions star Canelo. In fact, it was rather unconvincing. The only thing the fight proved is there’s a lot of poor judging in the sport of boxing.

Canelo wasn’t entirely on an island with his belief that he deserved the win. He had some company. Judge Adalaide Byrd gave Canelo the win by an unbelievable 118-110 score. She saw Canelo beating Golovkin by 10 rounds to 2. It was so such a bad score that she was widely ridiculed by many boxing fans, that made Canelo look even more like he was protected by the judges from another loss on record. In the past, Canelo had controversial wins over Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara.

Thankfully, fighters are unable to judge their own fights, because everyone would be undefeated.

Canelo said this to sdpnoticias.com about his belief that he deserved the win last September over GGG:

“I’ve seen it like 10 times, I think I made it a big fight. I won the fight by two points. I think that to making it more convincing [in the rematch], I just have to throw more punches and nothing else. We are analyzing if we concentrate before the fight in the mountains of Colorado, in the height to get in condition.”

There’s no shame in Canelo being under the false perception that he deserved the win over GGG last time. It’s just too bad that Canelo is one of the few people that believe that he deserved the win. In boxing you’re judged by the fans and your contemporaries, and they feel that Canelo lost to Golovkin. There’s nothing that can change that. Canelo can be proud that he wasn’t knocked out by Golovkin, and that the fans only think that he lost by 8 rounds to 4 and 9 rounds to 3. Those aren’t bad scores for Canelo in a losing effort against Golovkin. It could have been much worse of a loss for Canelo if Golovkin had stepped on the gas and really applied a ton of pressure on the red-headed Mexican fighter.

“We are looking for a convincing victory, and that’s why we’re going this time and we’re going to prepare [harder],” Canelo said. ”I’ll give my best in training so that the fight will be easier.”

We’ve seen video of Canelo working on his conditioning for the Golovkin rematch, but it might not help him win the fight. Conditioning is only half the battle. Golovkin has fought plenty of fighters that have had excellent conditioning, and yet they’ve still lost badly to him. You have to be able to take Golovkin’s major power shots in order to have a chance to beat him. So even if Canelo does improve his poor conditioning, he’ll still need to be able to stand up to Triple G’s huge power shots for the entire 12 round fight. I don’t think Canelo can do that unless he runs from him like he did last time. Running is not a way to win. It’s a way to survive, and that’s what Canelo did the last time he fought Golovkin. Canelo just tried to survive and he did, and the poor judging did the rest by saving him from a well-deserved loss.

Canelo needs to improve his conditioning in a major way for him to be competitive against the 35-year-old GGG in the rematch on the 5th of May, because the conditioning is what let him down in a major way.

These are the areas where Canelo needs to improve for him to beat Golovkin without controversy in the rematch:

• Conditioning

• Stay off the ropes

• Standing his ground

• Attacking Golovkin a lot more. Canelo can’t just let Golovkin press him for 3 full minutes of each round without being seen going on the attack a lot more. The way Canelo fought his previous opponent Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Golovkin were the complete opposite. Canelo was the one pressuring Chavez Jr. the entire fight. But against Golovkin, Canelo was running from him and looking to avoid the fight. That made it impossible to give Canelo rounds, because he looking like he was spoiling and just fighting negatively to avoid being ground down into hamburger by GGG. Canelo lacked the engine to fight hard enough to make it a fight

The judges scored the first Canelo-GGG fight 118-110 for Canelo, 115-113 for Golovkin and 114-114. Boxing News 24 had Golovkin winning by a wide score of 9 rounds to 3. Canelo looked very good in rounds 1, 2 and 12. Apart from those rounds, Canelo failed to do enough in the major portion of the contest to give him a chance to win.

Canelo would like the option of facing Golovkin a third time in a trilogy fight. He sees there being high chances of a third fight against the Kazakhstan fighter if their fight No.2 is an excellent one for the boxing public. It’s in Canelo and Golovkin’s best interest for them to fight 3 times, because once they start fighting other guys, they’re not going to make nearly as much money. The winner of their fight has little more than a possible unification fight against WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders (26-0, 12 KOs), who has ugly style of fighting that involves pure boxing and spoiling at it’s finest. There’s not a lot of money in a fight against Saunders, and it would likely be a cat and mouse type of affair for the Canelo-Golovkin winner to have to chase him around the ring for 12 rounds.

“I think there is a high percentage that there may be a third fight,” Canelo said of a third fight against Golovkin. ”Let’s see how the second one develops. In the first one, there was a lot of talk about the rematch, it came out to be done, we hope it’s a great fight and that the public will enjoy it, “ Canelo said.