Canelo vs. Golovkin 2: Gennady convinced he’ll win

Boxingnews24.com

By Sean Jones: Gennady Golovkin believes he won the previous fight with Saul Canelo Alvarez, and he has no doubts in his mind that he’ll beat him again when the two of them fight a rematch in 12 days from now on September 15 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Golovkin says he beat Canelo last September by every standard, and he’s going to do it a second time on HBO pay-per-view. But this time, Golovkin doesn’t intend on letting the Nevada judges take away his victory, Golovkin plans on knocking Canelo out so that he doesn’t have to deal with the judges again.

GGG is still the B-side in the promotion and Canelo the A-side. What that means is if the fight goes to the cards, there’s a very good chance that Canelo wins the fight unless Golovkin does something spectacular. The crowd will be pro-Canelo, as this is his venue in Vegas. It’s where Canelo’s fans come in high numbers to see him.

”Everybody know who won the fight,” Golovkin said about his fight against Canelo. “I’m just going to say this because we’re discussing it; Canelo lost the fight. That’s it. He lost the fight, according to all standards. I’m for justice. I’m for truth,” Golovkin said.

Golovkin doesn’t look like he’s gotten over the controversial draw from his first fight with Canelo. Golovkin needs to learn that when you go into the fight against a popular fighter that brings in tons of fans to a city like Las Vegas, it means you’ve got to do more than you normally would.

“Beating Golovkin doesn’t require much,” Canelo’s trainer Chepo Reynoso said.“Golovkin is a donkey who doesn’t think. He doesn’t have a thought in his head. He’s a man that comes forward throwing the same punches. There’s not much that we need to change.”

For Canelo’s sake, he’s been trained for the rematch and will have enough stamina to fight harder than he did in the first fight. Canelo’s conditioning was embarrassingly bad for a world class fighter last September. Chepo needs to admit that to beat Golovkin, Canelo needs to do much better than he did last time as far as fighting in a consistent manner. Just trying to steal the rounds by fighting hard in the first 45 seconds isn’t how you beat a world multi-belt world champion like Golovkin. Canelo needs to fight a lot harder.

Chepo is going a little overboard with his thoughts on GGG. If Golovkin didn’t think much as Chepo says, then he wouldn’t have fought well enough to beat his fighter Canelo last time. Canelo lost the fight in the eyes of the vast majority of the world. Golovkin was able to put enough pressure on Canelo in each round to tire him out entirely to the point where he was resting more than he was fighting. Golovkin was winning the rounds based on effort against a tired looking fighter. Chepo didn’t do a great job of training Canelo because he was tired most of the fight.

“Those who take illegal stuff get caught,” Golovkin said. “In their case, it didn’t go according to plan and they were caught red-handed. I know what I need. I need a little better work. I believe in my style. I think I win. A different story. A new story for me and for him,” Golovkin said.

To win the fight against Canelo, Golovkin needs to keep the pressure on him, throw more punches, and target his midsection more than he did in the first fight. Golovkin has to stay close to Canelo because if he stays on the outside, the fight is going to play out just like the first one. Golovkin let Canelo take all the rest breaks he needed to stay in the fight by his decision to box him from the outside.

If Golovkin had put Canelo under nonstop pressure in the first fight, he would have worn him down like a battery. Canelo was tired as it is from the way Golovkin was making him defend against his jabs from the outside. but it would have been much worse if Golovkin had stayed close to Canelo and thrown nonstop punches like he did in the 12th.

Canelo was exhausted and stumbling at the end of the fight from the shots that GGG was throwing at him. Canelo was really tired. His form had broken down entirely because he wasn’t able to have the space that he needed from GGG to take his rest breaks like he’d been doing during the first 11 rounds. Golovkin is still angry about the two positive tests for clenbuterol by Canelo. GGG thinks Canelo isn’t telling the truth in saying that he tested positive due to him eating. Canelo tested positive two times last September.

“I thought I won and I raised my hand,” Golovkin said. “This wasn’t boxing by Canelo. It was running. He didn’t hurt me. If we’re talking about harm, there wasn’t any.”

Canelo was boxing, but he wasn’t able to fight enough to make a case that he deserved a victory or a draw in the fight. He needed too many rest breaks for him to earn a decision, and he clearly didn’t win the fight. The movement that Canelo was using was out of necessity, because he didn’t have the engine to fight Golovkin for three minutes of any of the rounds. Before Canelo fought Golovkin, he was beating up on slow guys like Alfredo Angulo or smaller fighters like Jose Miguel Cotto, Amir Khan, Matthew Hatton, Josesito Lopez, Kermit Cintron and Miguel Cotto. Canelo wasn’t beating any really good fighers. His wins over Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara were losses in the eyes of this writer.

“It’s not the same thing to run as to have technique, to counter-punch,”Canelo said in response to Golovkin saying he ran from him. “That doesn’t make sense what he says. A right hand hurt him. That was a clean right hand that hurt him,”

Golovkin backed off once or twice in the fight after he was hit cleanly by Canelo, but he didn’t seem hurt. Golovkin came back right away and continued to press. When a fighter is hurt, they don’t come back the way Golovkin did against Canelo. Golovkin was able to take Canelo’s shots and come back to tire him out even in the rounds in which he landed a few good shots. It was always Golovkin that finished the rounds strongly, because Canelo would gas out after the first minute of the rounds. Canelo would spend the rest of the round moving of resting with his back against the ropes and being passive.

“All that training,” Canelo said about his fight with Golovkin last year. “For it to end in a draw isn’t what I want. I thought I won at least eight rounds of the fight. I was sure the fight was mine, and that I had won, that I was going to come out of the ring with my hand held high,” Canelo said.

Canelo didn’t win eight rounds against GGG. That would be a real stretch to say Canelo won eight rounds, but it’s understandable that he’s saying he felt that he won that many. It’s his personal bias. I’m sure if that he was being objective about it, he would realize that he didn’t do enough to win the fight. He was too sporadic with his punches for him to win more than two or three rounds at best.