Golovkin: Ring Magazine hasn’t called me champion and I’ve been a champion for 8 years

Boxingnews24.com

By Sean Jones

Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin took a shot at Ring Magazine about them not once naming him as their Ring middleweight champion despite the fact that he’s been a world champion for 8 years now. Golovkin says he sees it political situation with the owners of Ring Magazine not wanting him to be the champion.

Golovkin just shrugs his shoulders and says it’s not his problem. It’s the problem for the owners of Ring Magazine. They currently have Saul Canelo Alvarez as the Ring Magazine middleweight title, and he’s been their champion since his win over Miguel Cotto in November 2015. Canelo won the belt off Cotto in a catch-weight fight at 155 lbs.

Canelo defended the Ring title once against Amir Khan in May 2016, and then didn’t defend title for nearly 2 years until his fight with Golovkin last year in September. It was 21 months that went by before Canelo defended his Ring title against GGG. It’s unclear what Ring Magazine’s rules are in terms of how frequently their champions must defend their titles before they’re stripped, but it seems logical to assume that it should at least by on annual basis.

After Canelo’s title defense of his Ring belt against Amir Khan in May 2016, he then moved down to 154 and fought World Boxing Organization junior middleweight champion Liam Smith for his title in September 2016. After that, Canelo fought Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. at a catch-weight at 164 ½ pounds last year in May. That didn’t count as a title defense for his Ring middleweight title.

“This is politics,” Golovkin said to RingTV about Ring Magazine never having made him the Ring middleweight champion during his 8 years as a world champion. “I’ve been champion for the last 8 years and I’ve never and I wasn’t ever called champion by Ring Magazine. Someone was not even letting me get close to the Ring belt. This is politics, and it’s clear where it’s coming from. This is not my problem. This is the problems of the owners of the business,” Golovkin said.

It looks like Golovkin is taking a shot at Golden Boy Promotions by him criticizing Ring Magazine for him never being recognized as the Ring champion in the 8 years he’s been a world champion. When you think about the fact that Canelo has only had 3 fights at middleweight, and two of those fights were against non-middleweights in Cotto and Amir Khan, it looks bad that he’s Ring Magazine’s middleweight champion. That title should arguably be in Golovkin’s hands or be vacant due to Canelo failing to defend the title for almost 2 years following his win over welterweight Amir Khan in 2016.

Ring Magazine let Canelo freeze his title for 21 months before he defended it again. Heavyweight Tyson Fury was only recently stripped of his Ring Magazine heavyweight title after he failed to defend the title for over 2 years. Having Fury holding the Ring title hostage for two years at the same time that Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder held world titles, it looked bad. That belt should have been stripped from Fury a long time ago.

You can argue that the Ring Magazine champions don’t always represent the best fighters in their respective divisions. Look at the current Ring Magazine champions:

• Saul Canelo Alvarez – middleweight

• Jorge Linares – Lightweight

• Srisaket Sor Rungvisai – super flyweight

• Ryochi Taguchi – light flyweight

Linares and Canelo are both with Golden Boy promotions. Linares is not seen as the best fighter in the lightweight division. WBC lightweight champion Mikey Garcia is viewed as the best fighter in the division. Rungvisai is now considered the best fighter at super flyweight, but he wasn’t recently when Naoya Inoue was still fighting in the division.

“If this fight is to happen, it will show that there is only one winner,” Golovkin said.

Golovkin wants to a deciive victory over Canelo Alvarez when the two of them face each other on May 5th at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Golovkin doesn’t want to be in the same position he was in last time he fought Canelo with the judges scoring it a 12 round draw. Golovkin won’t let them do that this time. He plans on knocking Canelo out.

Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez says he wants to teach Canelo a lesson he won’t soon forget because of his anger over being robbed last September. Golovkin isn’t upset with Canelo for him being exposed as a drug cheat in testing positive for clenbuterol. Golovkin wants to beat him badly because of what happened with their fight last year.

“I think the motivation comes from the robbery he felt took place last year,” Sanchez said to ESPN.com. “He’s gonna knock him out cleanly. Cleanly.”

That sounds like Sanchez is going to have Golovkin on a seek and destroy mission on May 5th. In their fight last September, Golovkin gave away the first two rounds to Canelo by not throwing enough punches, and staying on the outside. When Golovkin did start to fight, he jabbed Canelo and stayed at range for most of the fight. Golovkin was fighting Canelo like he had David Lemieux. It worked for Golovkin against Lemieux, because the judges were scoring the fight in a logical manner. They didn’t do that with the Canelo-GGG fight. The judges were looking at scoring rounds based on 2 or 3 hard punches landing from Canelo, and ignoring all long stretches where he was being out-boxed by Golovkin.

“If you fight once a year or twice a year you can get on and get off of stuff like that and be clean,” Sanchez said. ”I think the investigation has to happen.”

Canelo fights twice a year, so if he wanted to use clenbuterol in between fights without drug testing, of course he could do that quite easily, as could any fighter. The drug testing by VADA is only during the 8 weeks before a fight. If a fighter has been loading up on drugs before that period, they would have enough time to get off the drugs – and still benefit from them – before the testing by VADA starts up. The state Commissions need to figure out ways of testing that can detect PEDs in a more efficient manner. Whether that be through follicle testing or testing further out than 8 weeks is unclear. If fighters know they’re only going to be tested during the 8 weeks before a fight, then they can cycle up long before they get to within 8 weeks before the fight.

Golovkin wants fighters that test positive to be penalized without them being able to give excuses why they tested positive. Currently, fighters in boxing are able to give excuses that sometimes let them get out of being penalized, which is what Canelo is doing by blaming his positive test on him supposedly having eaten contaminated meat in Mexico. With Canelo’s excuse, it puts the Commission in the position where they can’t prove what he’s saying. They have to either believe him or not.

“He tests positive, that’s it. Only two (results): Yes or no. Positive or not positive, that’s it,” Golovkin said to ESPN.com. “First time (I heard) I think, ‘Oh, really? Maybe fight’s canceled. It’s a problem.”

Golovkin doesn’t want the fight with Canelo to be canceled, but he also doesn’t want to be fighting an opponent that is using drugs.

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