Canelo vs. GGG – Analysis and prediction

By Bob Smith: We as boxing fans have been blessed to have had some tremendous fights this year, with Wladimir Klitschko-Anthony Joshua, Andre Ward-Sergey Kovalev II, and now Saul Canelo Alvarez vs.-Gennady “GGG” Golovkin, among other exciting bouts.  For me, and many others, this is the biggest and most competitive fight in boxing, and hopefully will be entertaining.

To get some perspective on this fight, let’s take a few moments to consider the build up to this event, which the boxing public has eagerly anticipated for at least two years, perhaps more.  Noted boxing columnist Bob Smith anticipated the rise of GGG to pound-for-pound stardom, and perhaps even anticipated the concerns some fans may have had with judging and officiating in the two Kolalev-Ward fights, due to a lingering Cold War mentality among the boxing official and commentator class.

Given this prescient article, it may be helpful to take some time to consider some more insights from this author, who predicted the rise of GGG to the P4P list and also made the strong statement that Canelo would lose to Floyd Mayweather Jr. despite his advantages in size, youth, and power.

In my humble opinion, the latter one was one of the best articles he has written; he reasoned through a complex situation and came up with a realistic prediction – Mayweather will win a clear UD, and Alvarez will be a solid middleweight champion in a few years.  Though, to be fair, it should be noted that though the author had a clear idea of how the fight would turn out, he underestimated the punch count of Alvarez by 2.0833 punches per round.

It is this underestimation of Alvarez that would plague me and much of the boxing public in the future, as Canelo has proved himself again and again.  Each time Canelo would fight, I would think of betting against him, hoping for a large profit, and each time, thankfully, I did not – against Alfredo Angulo, he had a solid KO victory, though his detractors never game him the credit he deserved (Angulo was weight drained and/or threw the fight, haters said).

Against, Erislandy Lara, which was to be fair his most competitive fight, I thought it could have gone either way, but felt Lara did enough to sneak out the decision victory for Canelo in their fight in 2014.  Skilled analyst Bob Smith, whose opinion I respect, predicted a unanimous decision for Canelo, but then thought after a close second viewing that it should have been called a draw.

And from eking out that victory against Lara, who arguably can be considered an undefeated fighter as he was robbed in his Paul Williams fight and barely lost to Canelo, Canelo has improved qualitatively in each fight.  It really has been a pleasure to behold someone who improved in style, skill, grace, and power with each fight and with consistent dedication to his craft.  I thought that he might have trouble against Kirkland not due to a deficit in skill but in stamina, but instead Canelo had arguably his most electrifying victory (though haters countered that Kirkland was without his trainer Ann Wolfe and was weight drained, in the best of circumstances he would have lasted only a few more rounds).

The big test for me and for many for Canelo was Miguel Cotto, at that point the lineal middleweight champion due to a defeat of Sergio Martinez (whose main skill of speed and movement was severely undermined due to his injury).  I thought it was a toss up going into the fight, given the skill and experience of Cotto, but after watching it, gave Canelo a hard fought win, and my respect for him increased enormously.

Clearly Bob Smith favored Canelo over Cotto then, so my hesitation proved wrong.  And from there, it was only a matter of time before the two leviathans of boxing clashed – Canelo took a fight against technically sound and speedy Amir Khan and crushed him with timing and power; got a belt in his fight against lesser known junior middleweight champion Liam Smith, and settled a persona grudge in his humiliation of Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.  In each of these fights, Canelo overcame strikingly different adversaries – in Khan, a speedy and skilled boxer; in Smith, someone dedicated to his craft, and solid; in Chavez Jr., someone naturally bigger, highly motivated, and with a tremendous chin.  If the reader cares to review these fights it is important to note the tremendous improvements Canelo has made with counter punching and defense, which are right now his biggest strengths and advantages over Golovkin.

We then must contrast a constantly improving Canelo who takes on a variety of challengers and always wins, often impressively, with a GGG who has seemed to be slipping recently.  Gone are the days when one speculates, as Bob Smith did, if anyone can beat Golovkin, or if GGG is too good for his own good.

Though both articles are good, I’d like to focus on a crucial paragraph by Bob Smith in the first one:

“(3) Alvarez – the thing that would most help Alvarez in a fight with Golovkin is his speed and combinations. GGG is relatively easy to hit among the truly elite fighters, but of course as the world found out yesterday, he can punch back when hit as well. The other thing Alvarez has is his body type – cast iron – and the fact that he naturally prefers to outbox fighters that are slower and come forward like GGG. So, Alvarez in my opinion has a better chance against GGG than any other 154 pound or 160 pound fighter, and even than any super middleweight save for the above two. The problem, however, is that Alvarez has only taken punches from people at 154, and if even the brother of Miguel Cotto wobbled him, a GGG knockout at some point seems inevitable. He has perhaps a 10-15% chance of beating Golovkin.”

We should also note that this was written in the fall of 2014, nearly three years ago, and while GGG has at most leveled off, it is hard to argue that he is winning more convincingly than he did back then, and consider that GGG is now 35 while Canelo is a both seasoned and prime 26.  This is a really important contrast, as noted boxing analyst Bob Smith claimed that Canelo could go 12 rounds with GGG as early as two years ago:

Granted, no one has actually done this in the 2010s, save for a tremendous fighter in Danny Jacobs who rehydrated above 170 and who literally willed a defeat of cancer in his own body.  In predicting Canelo vs GGG, a set of key questions one should ask is the following: Would Canelo defeat Danny Jacobs?  Is he a more skilled fighter?  Is he more powerful? What advantages does Canelo have that Jacobs did not, and do his strength compensate for his shortcomings in comparison?

As for GGG’s history since he defeated Marco Antonio Rubio in a mere 2 rounds, he has at most leveled off.  In my humble opinion, GGG peaked in the fall of 2014, and has been on an ever increasing downward trajectory since then.  He scored an 11th round TKO against Martin Murray; defeated an over matched Willie Monroe Jr., and then, in perhaps the best victory of his career, used ring generalship and his tremendous jab to defeat the powerful and dangerous David Lemieux by 8th round TKO.

The hardcore GGG fan would like to think of his win against Lemieux as a blueprint for his win against Canelo – ring generalship, a solid job, and thudding power to wear Canelo down before he takes him out.  The problem is that Canelo, while less powerful than Lemieux, is a much better boxer with much better defense.  Canelo simply will not be hit as regularly with the jab and will do a much, much better job of counter punching, including with his uppercut, which has tremendous snap and power.  At this point, I have to favor Canelo against Lemieux due to the massive skill advantage of Canelo, and GGG will need to make better adjustments than he is used to making if he plans to break down Canelo.

The fights after Dominic Wade (KO 2) can only be called lesser performances.  Some might argue that GGG was taking it easy to be able to get the Canelo fight, but even if that is part of the story, and that is a big if, it is only a minority of it.  The fact is, Kell Brook had a tremendous round 2 against GGG, and he did so through speed, counter punching, aggression, combinations, and his uppercut.  Canelo is much better at all of these and likely has fantasized dozens of times about doing the same thing, and getting GGG to fight off the back foot.  Against Jacobs, GGG fought with caution, due to respect for Jacob’s one punch KO power I am sure, but also due to the skill of Jacobs – he simply was not able to cut off the ring as he would have liked to do.  Though Canelo has much slower feet than Jacobs, he also has much better defense, and undoubtedly will produce at least a few highlight clips of GGG looking slow and robotic and getting successfully countered, regardless of the outcome of the fight.

What then is my prediction?  In a tremendous surprise to myself, I have to call Canelo the favorite and GGG the underdog, despite GGG not having ever lost, even with his tremendous record and KO percentage.  Moreover, as Nero Studios points out in his you tube channel

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5vlAO6KParepRilpyzVCkA

the fan favorite and crowd favorite, someone who is able to work the judges better, as Canelo undoubtedly has in the past, has the edge in close fights, as Ward did against Kovalev.  Whatever your opinion of the outcome, Ward was given the benefit of the doubt more than Kovalev was in the judge’s decision and by the referees – this is meaningful enough to swing a close fight against a seasoned champion.  Perhaps it will be the same outcome in this fight as well?

Moreover, I do not even think that Canelo’s “guarantee” of knocking out GGG is an idle boast either – he has a decent chance of doing this, especially if he can counter on the inside with uppercuts as GGG tries to throw wide punches to the head.  GGG likes to throw haymakers, kind of like Marcos Maidana but in a completely legal way, that land on the side of an opponent’s head and affect their balance, like he did in the Rubio fight.  Those kinds of punches offer perfect countering opportunities, and Canelo has tremendous hand speed and combinations.  Moreover, GGG is particularly vulnerable to the uppercut, as his fight with Kell Brook showed.

So, rather than seeing this fight as a toss-up, I have to given the slight advantage to Canelo, regardless of what the boxing public or odds makers think.  If in the fall of 2014, Bob Smith gave Alvarez a 10-15% chance of winning, with all due respect to Mr. Smith, I have to state that the chance of Alvarez winning is now up to 55-65%.  Again, this is due to the tremendous improvements in stamina, defense, counter punching, crispness and slickness of Canelo, with the corresponding recent lackluster performances of GGG.

I will say this though: even though Canelo is much more likely to win now than he was three years ago; even though a tremendous number of Mexican fans want this; even though if he wins he would be crowned P4P #1; even though Mayweather and his whole boxing gym predict a Canelo victory, typically by KO;  even though he is the younger and bulkier fighter; even though he has better speed and combinations; even though he has better defense; even though he has improved in the past few years while GGG has not; even though I personally believe he will be given the benefit of the doubt by the referees and judges; even though he has a tremendous uppercut; even though he has a cast iron chin and has never been knocked down in his career; even though he has outclassed his opponents tremendously in his last few fights, still in the end, I will go with GGG by knockout.

This will be an “upset KO”.  It will not be supposed to happen.  Canelo will win a substantial number of the rounds and make GGG look foolish with his head and body movement.  He will also frustrate GGG with his clean counters and get him to fight off of the back foot for entire stretches of rounds and rounds at a time.  He will take the ring generalship away from GGG in a way that has never been done before, mark my words.

But in the end, GGG will win.  He will hang in there, despite being outclassed repeatedly; he will fight more cautiously and then use his jab and also go to the body.  His body work will slow Canelo down, and then it will be to the ropes with Canelo – final prediction – 9th round KO for GGG.