Canelo won’t last 6 rounds against GGG says Malignaggi

Boxingnews24.com

By Sean Jones: Paulie Malignaggi sees Saul “Canelo” Alvarez getting quickly taken apart by Gennady “GGG” Golovkin tonight and knocked out by the 6th round in their fight at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. In Malignaggi’s mind, Golovkin (37-0, 33 KOs) doesn’t need to even land with one of his best shots for him to knockout the Golden Boy promoted Canelo (49-1-1, 34 KOs) in their highly hyped fight.

If Golovkin just connects cleanly, Canelo could taste the canvas. Malignaggi sees Golovkin as having too much power for Canelo. It doesn’t matter that Canelo will likely outweigh him tonight. Golovkin is just the much stronger fighter of the two.

Golovkin-Canelo will be televised on HBO pay-per-view tonight. The start time is at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT. There’s not much of an undercard to speak of for the fight to help bring some entertainment to the boxing fans while they wait for the main event. The boxing fans want to see Canelo and Golokinf fight so badly that they’ll not gripe about the undercard being filled with no name fighters involved in mostly mismatches.

“If Golovkin touches you, you go down,” said Malignaggi to the podbay.fm. “He has proven it time and again. I do think Golovkin is the tighter fighter. He’s the more well-schooled fighter, but with both guys being flat-footed, shots will land. I just don’t think that once a shot lands by Golovkin the right way, Canelo is going to be standing. This guy hits very hard. I think he’s going to hurt Canelo. I think it will be a fun fight,” said Malignaggi.

Canelo, 27, will very likely choose to take the fight to the inside to attack Golovkin’s body. That was the only weakness that GGG showed in his fight with Danny Jacobs on March 18. Jacobs had his best success at backing Golovkin up when he would him hard to the body. The head shots that Jacobs landed did nothing.

Golovkin would nod at Jacobs, and nail him back with a power jab that would snap the New Yorker’s head back. Jacobs didn’t throw enough body shots to give himself a chance to win. Jacobs was largely aiming his punches upstairs at Golovkin’s head, and most of his shots were picked off on the Kazakhstan fighter’s gloves.

Canelo is going to try a bit of everything. He’ll throw his obligatory uppercuts and hooks. If Canelo can’t land his uppercut, he’ll go with the straight right hand. On defense, Canelo will be rocking his upper body back and forth to try and avoid Golovkin’s shots to the head. A lot of the movement that Canelo does with his upper body leaves his midsection unprotected. That’s a big flaw in Canelo’s game ever since he adopted the Mayweather-like torso movement around 2013. Canelo hasn’t yet fought anybody that has attacked his body.

Liam Smith threw a lot of body shots against Canelo in their fight in 2016, but he didn’t have the conditioning to stay in the fight long enough to hurt him. Golovkin has an excellent chance of knocking Canelo out with a body shot if he moves his torso too much tonight. Canelo wants to be clever, but his style of fighting could lead to an early exit.

Malignaggi rates Golovkin’s previous opponent Daniel Jacobs as a better fighter than Canelo. Jacobs doesn’t have the popularity that Canelo possesses, but he’s a better fighter than him, according to Malignaggi. Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez also feels the same way. He thinks Jacobs is a much better fighter than Canelo. Jacobs, 6’1”, is a lot taller than the 5’8” Canelo, and he hits harder than him. Jacobs punches like a middleweight. Canelo is a good puncher for the 154-lb. division, but his power didn’t come up with him.

“The difference between [Daniel] Jacobs and Canelo is one if more famous than the other, but in reality, Jacobs is actually better. I think Jacobs is a more complete fighter than Canelo,” said Malignaggi. ”He’s [Jacobs] not as flat-footed, which is very important when you’re fighting Canelo, because being flat-footed will keep you in the punching zone a lot more often, and you don’t want to be in the punching zone, because if you’re Canelo fighting Triple G or if you’re anybody fighting Triple G, [it’s bad],” said Malignaggi.

It’s too bad that Canelo didn’t fight Jacobs first before facing Golovkin. That would have been the better thing for Canelo and Golden Boy to do. If Canelo had taken on Jacobs, then the boxing public would have a better way of comparing the two fighters. Canelo’s recent fights were against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., Liam Smith and Amir Khan. Those fighters are nowhere near as good as Jacobs. Canelo has been taking it easy lately with the fighters that Golden Boy has been matching him against. Canelo has looked good in those fights, but he’s not faced anyone with the kind of talent needed to give him a real test to see if he’s for real or just a hyped fighter with a large fan base.

“I don’t think the fight can go the distance, because both guys hit too hard,” said Malignaggi about the Canelo-GGG fight. “I don’t think it takes much thunder for Golovkin to drop you and KO you. I don’t think its going 6 rounds, and I think Golovkin wins it,”said Malignaggi.

Malignaggi doesn’t think much of Canelo for him to be picking Golovkin to obliterate him so fast tonight. But in looking at how Canelo was unable to put Chavez Jr. and Miguel Cotto away, he lacks power at the middleweight level. The Chavez Jr. fight took place at a catch-weight of 164.5 pounds, but you might as well have called it a fight at middleweight.

Chavez Jr. didn’t eat for 4 days leading up to the fight to make weight, says Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez. Chavez Jr. was totally drained, and Canelo couldn’t knock him out. His power wasn’t good enough to hurt Chavez Jr. That’s bad news or Canelo, because if he doesn’t have any punching power to keep Golovkin off of him tonight, then he’s going to get wiped out.

”I think the main thing we saw Jacobs backing Golovkin up with, when he was backing him up, was body shots,” said Malignaggi. “The attack to the body, of course, you have to do it by being smart and sharp, because you open yourself up for hard shots when you do to the body. One thing about Golovkin, he does back up when he’s taking it to the body. The little breaks Jacobs was able to earn in the fight, because Jacobs had to fight almost every second of every round, that’s why he was so tired at the end of it, the little breaks Jacobs was able to earn was when he backed Golovkin up with big body shots and a body attack. The head shots, Golovkin took pretty well, but the body shots, Golovkin actually backed up. It’s real important that Canelo go to the body, but he’s going to be at risk of taking a shot,” said Malignaggi.

It’s expected that Canelo will crowd Golovkin all night for landing body shots, and to smother his punching power. Golovkin doesn’t hit as hard when his opponents are on the inside. It’s still going to be tough for Canelo to stay in close though, as Golovkin will step back and nail Canelo with shots if he keeps plodding forward all night long to make it an inside war.

If Golovkin wants to stay on the inside, then he’ll let Canelo walk in and stay in close. But it’s more likely that Golovkin will back up and shoot a jab straight down to middle to keep Canelo from walking him down. If Canelo gets hit often enough while plodding forward, he’ll stop and just try and fight at medium distance.

“I do think Canelo can be the one,” said Chavez Jr. to secondsout.com in saying Canelo can be his heir. “He’s very strong, very fast, and dedicated and he could be the next JC Chavez, but it’s up to him. We’re going to see on Saturday if he’s up for the challenge,”said Chavez.

Canelo might be the replacement for Chavez as far as popularity goes in the Mexican boxing world, but he hasn’t shown the willingness to take on the top fighters the way Chavez did. Canelo has been busy fighting a lot of older and/or more flawed fighters at 147 to 160. Canelo’s last 5 fights gives you a pretty good idea what Golden Boy is doing with him. They appear to be protecting him.

Canelo’s last 5 fights have come against these names:

• Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.

• Liam Smith

• Amir Khan

• James Kirkland

• Miguel Cotto

Those are the type of fighters you match guys with when you’re trying to protect them from getting beaten. Those aren’t great fighters.

The good fighters that Canelo SHOULD have been fighting in his last 5 fights are these guys:

• Daniel Jacobs

• Jermall Charlo

• Sergiy Derevyanchenko

• Jermell Charlo

• Erickson Lubin

It’s quite understandable why Golden Boy didn’t match Canelo against those guys. They would have likely all beaten him. But you can’t say that Canelo is the heir to Chavez when he’s fighting the likes of Khan, Cotto, Smith, Kirkland and Chavez Jr. Those guys are too poor for Canelo to be the next Chavez unless you want to base him just on his huge boxing fan base rather than on his talent.

“He’s still very young and this is the fight the people have been asking him for, but if he wins, people are going to criticize him and say that he waited 2 to 3 years for Golovkin to be older,” said Chavez. “And if he loses, everybody is going to criticize him, because everybody is going to say that he’s not the Canelo everybody thought he was going to be. So either or, it’s going to play bad on Canelo,” said Chavez.

Chavez is correct about Canelo facing heavy abuse from the boxing fans no matter what happens tonight against Triple G. By waiting 2-3 years before facing Golovkin, Canelo has put himself in the position where the knowledgeable boxing fans that understand the game will see him as having waited until Golovkin got old before fighting him. They would see Canelo as having stalled on the fight until Golovkin was 35-years-old and coming off 2 less than impressive performances against Jacobs and Kell Brook. Those fans aren’t going to give Canelo credit, because he didn’t face Golovkin when he was at his best when he was 32 or 33.

Waiting until Golovkin was 35 before fighting him makes Canelo look like he purposefully stalled to ensure that Golovkin was too old to beat him. Likewise, if Canelo loses to Golovkin tonight, then the boxing public will heap abuse on him and say he was always just a bum, a guy that was hyped heavily based on how he looks with his red hair. The boxing fans will say that Canelo was fed a lot of older fighters at the ends of their careers like Shane Mosley, Kermit Cintron, Miguel Cotto, Alfredo Angulo, James Kirkland, Ryan Rhodes, Matthew Hatton and Lovemore Ndou.