Canelo vs. Golovkin at T-Mobile Arena in Vegas

Boxingnews24.com

By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions has decided to stage the September 16th Saul “Canelo” Alvarez vs. Gennady “GGG” Golovkin fight at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. This comes to no surprise to many boxing fans, as Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya stages a lot of his fights in Vegas. Golden Boy picked the T-Mobile Arena over the much larger AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, Madison Square Garden in New York, the United Kingdom, as well as Dodger’s Stadium in Los Angeles, California.

Both of those venues would have allowed many more boxing fans to see the Canelo-Golovkin fight live rather than watching it on pay-per-view or closed circuit TV. There’s still no word about how much the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight will be going for on HBO PPV.

Canelo says he’s going to prove to the boxing world that this is the “Canelo era” when he gets Golovkin inside the ring. Let’s hope so for Canelo’s sake. He already failed once against Floyd Mayweather Jr., and he also had problems against Erislandy Lara in winning a questionable decision over him. Those are the 2 best guys on Canelo’s 12-year resume. Can you call them both defeats?

Canelo is now fighting what many boxing fans believe is his best opponent of his career. That’s not a knock on the smallish Mayweather, but he’s clearly much smaller than Golovkin. There was never any danger for Canelo to be knocked out by Mayweather. There is GREAT danger of Canelo being knocked out and embarrassed by Golovkin.

De La Hoya says that he picked out Las Vegas as the city for the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight because he wanted the boxing fans to enjoy themselves. Of course, it’s quite possible that the offer De La Hoya received from the T-Mobile Arena management made it too good to turn down staging the fight there. De La Hoya is predicting that his fighter Canelo will knockout Golovkin.

The odds of that happening are not that good, as Golovkin is a 2:1 favorite over Canelo. Moving up in weight seems to have hurt Canelo’s punching power. He didn’t look formidable against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. last month in their fight on May 6 on HBO PPV.

“This is the type of fight I have dreamed of since I became a professional boxer,” Golovkin said via espn.com. “This fight will be at a true championship level, and we will give the fans an exciting fight.”

You can’t really call the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight a true championship. It’s more of a case of Golovkin defending his IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight titles against a challenger and not a champion in Canelo. The red-haired Mexican star Canelo USED to be a champion at 154 and at 160, but he gave up his titles both times in vacating them. Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez doesn’t even rate Canelo as the second best fighter at 160.

Sanchez sees Danny Jacobs as the second best fighter in the middleweight division. A lot of the boxing fans of the sport would agree with him. Jacobs is a lot bigger than the 5’9” Canelo, and faster than him as well. Canelo is just a good fighter with a lot of unknowns surrounding him as he moves up to the 160lb division.

Canelo is coming off of a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision win over Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in their catch-weight fight at 164 ½ pounds last month on HBO PPV on May 6 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. After blanking the weight drained looking Chavez Jr. by the one-sided scores of 120-108, 120-108 and 120-108, Canelo announced his September 16th fight with Golovkin in the center of the ring.

Golovkin climbed into the ring and the two of them were briefly interviewed by HBO commentator Max Kellerman. Golovkin looked noticeably bigger than Canelo, both in height and in size. However, Golovkin is in between fights right now, and he had obviously put on weight that he normally wouldn’t be carrying around for one of his fights. Golovkin looked like he was in the 180s. Canelo appeared to be in the low 170s.

“I am thrilled to return to T-Mobile Arena, and to give the fans the best fight that can be made in our sport today,” said Canelo via espn.com. “I have repeatedly said that I fear no man, and I am now going to prove it by stepping into the ring against GGG. When the final bell rings, everyone will know that this is indeed the Canelo era, and that I am the best fighter in all of boxing.”

Staging the Canelo-Golovkin fight in Las Vegas assures that the boxing crowd at ringside will be a pro-Canelo crowd. Golovkin’s fan base is more situated in the New York area. Many of Canelo’s fans are in Nevada, California and Texas.

It can’t be called the Canelo era when he’s already been beaten by Mayweather. It’s premature to call this the Canelo era. He’s got to beat Golovkin, Jermall Charlo, Danny Jacobs, Demetrius Andrade, Jermell Charlo and Erislandy Lara. I don’t think Canelo can beat all of those fighters. I’m not sure if Canelo can beat any of them without controversy.

There’s a belief by many fans that the only reason why Golden Boy chose to match Canelo against GGG now is because of the Kazakhstan fighter’s recent off performance against Danny Jacobs on March 18. It was a close fight with Golovkin winning by a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores 114-113, 115-112 and 115-112. Golovkin’s knockdown of Jacobs in the 4th round is what the difference in the fight was.

Golovkin was far from his best form. De La Hoya says he didn’t choose to match Canelo against Golovkin due to his off performance against Jacobs. De La Hoya says he ALWAYS intended to match Canelo against Golovkin at this point. Golovkin is 35 now, and De La Hoya has him waiting for 2 years for this moment in time. Golovkin’s decision win over Jacobs ended his impressive 23 consecutive knockout streak which had started in 2008.

“Everybody wanted this fight, and I nailed it down,” said De La Hoya to espn.co about the Canelo-Golovkin fight. “Everybody who wants to go to Vegas, have a great time. Watch a great fight with Triple G and Canelo. I mean it’s going to be a train wreck, let me tell you.”

You’ve got to give De La Hoya credit for choosing to make the Canelo-Golovkin fight. Some would say it was a strategic move on De La Hoya’s part in waiting 2 years until Golovkin was 35 and coming off of back to back non impressive performances. Golovkin looked invincible in 2015. Recently, Golovkin hasn’t looked as good. However, that could have been a plan by him to lull Golden Boy into a false sense of confidence so that they would finally match their golden goose Canelo against Golovkin. We’ll have to see on September 16 just how much Golovkin has left in the tank. It did appear that Golovkin wasn’t fighting all-out in his last fight against Jacobs.

Golovkin seemed to back off after knocking Jacobs down in the 4th. That was unusual behavior by Golovkin, because he’s always looked to finish off one of his opponents after hurting them. In the case of Jacobs, Golovkin stepped back and didn’t press the issue after knocking him down effortlessly in the 4th round. The blue-print in how to beat Jacobs was already there by Dmitri Pirog. All Golovkin had to do was pressure Jacobs with power shots and he would fold. Golovkin backed off and let Jacobs survive. Golovkin then spent the remainder of the fight mostly jabbing Jacobs instead of throwing power shots.

The fight between Canelo and Golovkin will be taking place at 160 pounds without a catch-weight. Canelo has fought 7 out of his last 8 fights at catch weights in the last 4 years. The only Canelo fight that didn’t take place at a catch weight since 2013 was his match against WBO junior middleweight champion Liam Smith on September 17 last year. That was Canelo’s first bout since vacating his World Boxing Council middleweight title shortly after he’d been ordered by the WBC to defend it against Golovkin.

Canelo wasn’t ready to defend his title against Golovkin at the time, so he vacated the belt and moved back down to 154 to challenger Liam Smith. Canelo beat Liam Smith to win the WBO 154-pound title, and he then vacated it so that he could move up super middleweight to fight Chavez Jr. at a catch-weight of 164.5 pounds. In hindsight, Canelo would have saved time if he’d simply defended his WBC title against Golovkin in 2016 instead of facing Liam Smith and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. However, Golovkin would have been entitled to a bigger split of the revenue for the fight with Canelo. That might be one of the biggest reasons why Canelo and Golden Boy chose not to take the fight with GGG at the time. Certainly, Chavez Jr. and Smith were not good preparation to get Canelo ready for what he’ll be dealing with when he gets inside the ring with Golovkin. Liam Smith had stamina issues, and Chavez Jr. was just a weight drained punching bag for Canelo.