Canelo doesn’t have the power to make GGG fight cautiously

Boxingnews24.com

By Chris Williams: Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (49-1-1, 34 KOs) has a high 67% knockout percentage after 12 years as a pro, but apparently he’s not as big a puncher as people think he is, according to Gennady “GGG” Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez. He says former IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux is a bigger puncher than Canelo. Sanchez uses Canelo’s inability to knockout the depleted Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. last Saturday night as an example of Canelo not having the kind of knockout power that people believe him to possession.

Sanchez says Golovkin won’t fight Canelo the way that he did Lemieux by playing it safe and staying on the outside and jabbing him. Golovkin will actually fight Canelo says Sanchez. He thinks Golovkin can succeed at slugging with Canelo. Sanchez does rate Canelo’s hand speed and ability to throw combinations, but he’s not enamored with his punching power in the least.

“I don’t think it’ll be that kind of fight,” said trainer Abel Sanchez to Dontae’s Boxing Nation in saying the Golovkin-Canelo fight won’t be similar to the Golovkin vs. Lemieux fight. “I don’t think Canelo is the type of puncher that he thinks he is and everybody seems to think he is. Lemieux is. I don’t care what the heck everybody says. Lemieux is a puncher. He is a very strong guy. Canelo hit Chavez with everything but the stool and he couldn’t hurt him,” said Sanchez about Canelo not being a puncher.

Canelo could have knocked Chavez Jr. out if he had wanted to last Saturday night. Canelo was being nice to Chavez Jr. Canelo has a heart. He’s not going to blast someone out who wasn’t even doing anything in the fight. You could see that Canelo was trying to help Chavez Jr. by giving him a chance in the fight by going to the ropes, trying to encourage him. Canelo didn’t want to finish Chavez Jr. off. He wanted to give the boxing fans a good fight. It wouldn’t have been a good fight if Canelo had knocked Chavez Jr. out immediately, which I think he could have done.

Canelo saw right away that Chavez Jr. was defenseless, and had no power or offensive skills to speak. So instead of smashing a poor defenseless Chavez, Canelo kept him in the fight and would land shots every now and then. Canelo would have knocked Chavez Jr. if he was throwing anything back and trying to make a fight of it, but he wasn’t doing that. Chavez looked like a broken fighter, and Canelo didn’t want to slaughter him. That’s what I saw.

I don’t think Canelo could get himself to destroy Chavez Jr. At the end of the day, Canelo had compassion for the guy. After all, Chavez Jr. was at one time a very good fighter in the past. He obviously isn’t anymore. Canelo didn’t want to take him out. It wouldn’t have been good for the boxing fans at the T-Mobile Arena to see Canelo obliterate a guy that wasn’t able to throw punches.

Sanchez has got it all wrong with Canelo, 26. Canelo has 34 knockouts on his career record, so he must be doing something right. Canelo is capable of loading up on his shots to get Golovkin-esque power, but he doesn’t do it often because it takes away from his hand speed. Canelo has a lot of power, believe me. I think Canelo hits as hard as Golovkin when he sits down on his shots. The man has MAJOR power.

Golovkin is more of a brute, who looks to sledgehammer his way to a knockout by loading up on every shot he throws. Canelo is more of a technician, who focuses on his craft, and doesn’t put everything he has on every shot. Canelo reminds me of a George Foreman with the way he throws most of his shots with moderate power. What made Foreman so dangerous was he would suddenly increase the power on his punches against his unsuspecting opponents, which would catch them unaware.

Canelo does the same thing, and that makes his power even better. But if Canelo wanted to, he could do what Golovkin does and go overboard by making everything a knockout punch. I suppose that Canelo would have a few more knockouts that way, but he’d make his job harder because he’d get hit more and take more punishment if he fought like Golovkin. Canelo isn’t going to do that because he’s got a lot of Mayweather in him. I think Canelo has learned a lot from his fight with Mayweather. Like Mayweather, Canelo wants to limit the amount of shots he takes from his opposition.

”The only two people he’s knocked out is [Amir] Khan and [James] Kirkland,” said Sanchez about Canelo. ”Everyone else has been long fights or long fights with a knockout or a TKO. So I don’t think he has that kind of power that’s going to demand the kind of fighting like we did against Lemieux. But he does have very fast hands. He does have very good combinations. He is a very good boxer,” said Sanchez.

I’ve seen a lot of guys that Canelo has knocked out besides Khan and Kirkland. Canelo knocked out Liam Smith, Josesito Lopez, Kerit Cintron, Alfredo Angulo and Alfonso Gomez. That’s just a short list. I think Canelo could have knocked out Miguel Cotto if he wanted to. I think he did the same thing with Cotto that he did with Chavez Jr. I think Canelo knew he had the fight totally won against, and he didn’t want to knock him out due to his respect for him. I think Canelo let his foot off the gas pedal when he had him hurt late in the fight.

Cotto was definitely hurt, but Canelo didn’t for the knockout. I think he didn’t want the Puerto Rican star. Canelo could have easily knocked out Cotto if he wanted to, but he let the guy hang around just like Chavez Jr. At some point though, Canelo will need to make sure goes for the knockout against guys like Golovkin, but it would be dangerous leave him inside the ring against him on September 16.

“We’re going to have to fight him, but I think it’s the kind of fight we want though,” said Sanchez. “The Mexicans are expecting that kind of fight. We thought we were going to get it on Saturday. Chavez was just too defeated. Let me tell you what happened. On Saturday night, he paid for all his weight issues from the past, all this undisciplined fights from the past. He didn’t allow Robert Garcia to coach him. He didn’t allow Freddie Roach to coach him. He didn’t allow Nacho [Beristain] to coach him. He didn’t allow his uncles, which were his original coaches to coach him. He did things the way his father used to, but he’s not his father. So he paid for all that last Saturday night. He hasn’t developed. Why, because hasn’t allowed his coaches to coach him and develop him. He paid for all that [expletive] last Saturday night,” said Sanchez.

I agree with Sanchez that Chavez Jr. was depleted/weight drained last Saturday night. However, I don’t think Chavez Jr. lost because he wasn’t trained for the fight. I can’t believe his trainer Nacho Beristain didn’t train him. I just think that Chavez Jr. was weight drained, too slow of hand, and not equipped to win the fight. I think Chavez Jr. realized that he didn’t possess the boxing skills to win, so he didn’t even try to let his hands go the way that he needed to for him to win. It wouldn’t have mattered if Chavez Jr. did attack Canelo. He didn’t have the punching power to do anything because of him having dropped so much weight to make the 164.5.b catchweight limit for the fight. That’s Chavez Jr’s fault. He shouldn’t have let himself get so out of shape the way he did.

“I think both guys understand that this is the kind of fight where we could have a trilogy fight,” said Sanchez. “They’re going to go at each other and fight each other. No matter who wins, the public buys it, because that’s what the public demands. We’re looking for warriors to go to war in the middle of the ring to give us the kind of entertainment for what we pay so we can see it again. I’m willing to see a good movie twice, no matter how much it costs. I think that kind of fight is going to be that and deserve that,” said Sanchez.

I think Sanchez is really getting ahead of himself in talking about trilogy fights or even rematches between Canelo and Golovkin. If Canelo wins the fight by a knockout, he’s moving on. He’s not going to give Golovkin a second chance, because the boxing fans aren’t going to want to buy a second fight between them under those conditions. The only way there would be a rematch is if Golovkin wins and/or the fight is a close, controversial decision. I don’t think it will be though. The way that Golovkin looked in his last fight against Daniel Jacobs, he’s going to lose to Canelo on September 16, and there’s nothing he can do about that. Golden Boy Promotions might throw Golovkin a bone if he’s still around in 2018 by giving him a rematch at that point, but I don’t see it happening later this year unless Canelo loses the fight somehow. There’s no reason to give Golovkin another shot unless he somehow wins the fight. I don’t see that happening.

May 10th,