Deontay Wilder picks Canelo to beat GGG

Boxingnews24.com

By Allan Fox: WBC heavyweight champion Deontay “Bronze Bomber” Wilder is picking former 2 division world champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (49-1-1, 34 KOs) to defeat unbeaten Kazakhstan fighter Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (37-0, 33 KOs) on September 16. Wilder doesn’t say why he’s siding with Canelo to beat Golovkin, but it’s possible that he feels that Golovkin isn’t fighting at a high level right now after his less than stellar performances in beating Daniel “Miracle Man” Jacobs and Kell “Special K” Brook in his last 2 fights.

Those were not as good performances from Golovkin that we’d gotten used to seeing from him in the past when he was knocking out everybody he’d faced. It might not be aging though that has caused GGG to look less than great in his last 2 fights. Brooks and Jacobs both have excellent hand speed, and they clearly faster than Golovkin. They both used movement at times to keep away from Golovkin. That was a different tactic than a lot of the guys that Golovkin has fought have used.

Golovkin had to not only chase Jacobs and Brook, but he also had to find a way to land his shots without getting hit with their faster shots. It didn’t work well for Golovkin in both fights. Triple G still won both fights, but he was exposed by them. The boxing public came away from seeing those fights and they were less enamored with GGG than they were before he fought them.

“I like Triple G. I like what he can do,” said Deontay Wilder This is 50. ”I also like Canelo though. I think I’m going to go with Canelo. I probably wouldn’t have said that a year ago. I like Triple G, I like everything about him. I got to go with Canelo,” said Wilder.

We don’t know how well Canelo will be able to adjust to the jab and punching power of Golovkin. That could prove to be difficult for Canelo. He had problems with the jabs from Erislandy Lara and Floyd Mayweather Jr. Those guys were able to dominate Canelo with their jabs alone. Golovkin has a better jab than either of those fighters. His jab is a lot more powerful. If you saw how Golovkin was able to snap the head back of Danny Jacobs with his jabs, it was pretty impressive. Canelo is shorter than Jacobs, and he won’t have the reach to nullify Golovkin’s jab if he chooses to use that weapon alone.

Where Canelo can get the better of Golovkin is at medium range. When Golovkin tries to land his shots, he’s going to get hit with Canelo’s fast combinations. It could come down to whether Golovkin can take Canelo’s two or three punches to land his own bigger shots. If Golovkin can take the shots, then Canelo is going to be in for a lot of trouble, because he’s not been hit consistently by a hard puncher during his career. James Kirkland seemed to buzz Canelo with one of his big power shots in their fight a couple of years ago. That was before Canelo was able to knock Kirkland out in the third round. If Golovkin is able to stick around long enough to make contact with a lot of his big shots, he could turn Canelo into another Willie Monroe Jr.

What we don’t know is whether Golovkin was intentionally holding back in the Brook and Jacobs fight. This is what some boxing fans believe. It’s a difficult theory to swallow though, as Golovkin appeared to be going after Brook in an all-out assault from the moment the fight started until it was over within in round 5. It didn’t look like Golovkin was holding back for an instant in the Kell Brook fight. The results showed clearly that Golovkin was shooting for a fast knockout.

Golovkin didn’t have the hand speed to finish Brook off as quickly as he would have needed to for him to look spectacular in that fight. Golovkin’s punching power was extraordinary, but not his hand speed and defense. In the Jacobs fight, Golovkin was too conservative to make it an impressive performance. It might well have ended with Golovkin knocking Jacobs out if he’d put the pressure on him that we saw in Jacobs’ loss to Dmitri Pirog in 2010. Pirog wasn’t more powerful than Golovkin.

The reason Pirog got the knockout was because he was more intent on knocking Jacobs out. Pirog had no respect for Jacobs’ power. He went after him, and took whatever shots he had to in order to knock him out. Golovkin didn’t put it on the line in the same way that Pirog did, which is why he had to settle for a 12 round unanimous decision. Golovkin was lucky o get that, because Jacobs’ confidence soared in the second half of the fight when he saw that Golovkin was just focusing on jabbing and boxing rather than punching.

Wilder’s view on the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor fight is the same view as Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya. In other words, Wilder doesn’t see the Mayweather-McGegor fight as one that’s good for boxing. He thinks it’ll be good for McGregor. Wilder didn’t spell why it would be good for McGregor, but it’s obvious that the money he gets for the fight as well as the attention from the fans will be a huge benefit to his career. McGregor will be the one that sees his popularity increase.

Mayweather will get more popular as well, but he won’t stick around boxing in order to enjoy it. Mayweather intends on going back into retirement. You can argue that Mayweather wants no part of the hard work that would be required of him if he were to continue fighting and was pressured by the boxing public to fight Keith Thurman and Errol Spence Jr. That would be a much different kettle of finish for Mayweather than it will be for him to beat up on the novice Conor McGregor, who has never fought a professional fight in the sport of boxing.

It doesn’t make Mayweather look good that he’s only willing to pick on a guy with no experience like McGregor instead of a relevant fighter in the sport of boxing. Mayweather’s legacy will be fine, because he’s already accomplished enough in the sport for him to get away with fighting circus fights like the McGregor fight. The only way I see this hurting Mayweather’s legacy is if he chooses to fight a series of matches against UFC fighters after the McGregor fight.

If Mayweather decides he wants to clean up the UFC of all their top fighters in the boxing ring, then it would make him look really bad. The same would apply if Mayweather decided he wanted to fight NFL, professional golfers and NBA players inside the boxing ring. Yeah, Mayweather would probably be able to get a lot of PPV buys for those mismatches, but it would ugly for his legacy. When you start pooling from other sports to find easy marks to fight, then it’s kind of off putting. The fans would start to wonder why is Mayweather unwilling to fight the best from his own sport instead of having to pick on guys from other sports.

“No, it’s more beneficial for [Conor] McGregor,” said Wilder about the McGregor vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight.