Mayweather: Canelo will knockout Golovkin

boxingnews24.com

By Dan Ambrose: Floyd Mayweather Jr. once again has chimed in on his thoughts about the future Saul “Canelo” Alvarez vs. Gennady “GGG” Golovkin fight. Mayweather has been vocal in the past about his believe that the Golden Boy star Canelo being the guy that eventually beats Triple G despite the fact that he vacated his WBC middleweight title to avoid the fight.

Mayweather says that Canelo will beat Golovkin and knock him out. Further, Mayweather also thinks there are three fighters that can beat Golovkin. He doesn’t say who all three of them are, but he puts Canelo on top of the list.

In the past, Mayweather has encouraged Golovkin to move up two divisions to fight Andre Ward at light heavyweight. Mayweather didn’t mention Ward this week for Golovkin. With Ward coming off of a poor performance against Sergey Kovalev, it seems that he’s no longer being floated by Mayweather as a name that GGG should fight.

“I’ve always believed that Triple G has good punching power as a fighter,” said Mayweather as quoted by Fight Hype. “He has good punching power, but he’s flat-footed. He makes a lot of mistakes. Do I think Triple G can beat Canelo? Absolutely not. I think there’s a few guys out there that can beat Triple G, and Canelo is the top guy on the list think will beat him. I don’t think the fight will go the distance,” said Mayweather.

It’ll be interesting to see what tune Mayweather whistles if Canelo does face Golovkin this year in September and loses badly to him. Does Mayweather give Golovkin credit for the win or does he make excuses for Canelo by saying he had a bad night. Right now, Canelo doesn’t look good enough to beat Golovkin in the eyes of a lot of boxing fans. They see Canelo as being a tank-like fighter, who wins his fights by having a size advantage over his carefully selected opponents.

Canelo hasn’t faced the real quality fighters at 154 other than Erislandy Lara, who many fans feel should have been given the decision over him. Canelo hasn’t the Charlo brothers, Demetrius Andrade, Julian Williams, Golovkin or Daniel Jacobs. The fighters that Canelo is matched up against nowadays are vulnerable fighters instead of the really good opponents. A lot of boxing fans wonder why Canelo is being matched against Chavez Jr.. Amir Khan, Liam Smith and James Kirkland.

There are some boing fans who believe that Mayweather doesn’t want Golovkin to beat Canelo. If he did beat Canelo and beat him badly by a knockout, it might cheapen Mayweather’s own win over the red-haired star from 2013. Mayweather played it safe for 12 rounds in beating Canelo by a very dull decision while taking no chances.

Mayweather threw almost nothing but jabs in the fight, as he wasn’t willing to throw power shots and risk getting hit by one of Canelo’s counter left hooks. If Golovkin does a better job of beating Canelo by knocking him out viciously, then the boxing world might forget about Mayweather’s boring win over him and focus instead on Triple G.

It would definitely take the wind out of the sails of Mayweather’s victory over Canelo, which took place at a strength draining catch-weight of 152lbs. Moreover, Mayweather caught Canelo at the early stage of his career when he was only 22. This was before Canelo added a lot of weight and started to rehydrate into the mid-170s and possibly 180s for his fights.

If Mayweather had to fight a huge Canelo instead of the 165 pound Canelo that he fought in 2013, it might have been a different story. Mayweather would have likely had a lot of problems with Canelo if he fought him right now, as big as he is. Canelo is someone that can arguably fight at super middleweight. Canelo’s next fight against super middleweight Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. will be taking place at a catch-weigh of 164 ½ pounds on May 6 on Cinco de Mayo.

Canelo would have problems with Golovkin’s power, and his high pressure fighting. Canelo can be beaten with a jab. We saw that in his loss to Mayweather. He was rendered helpless by Mayweather with just a jab. If Golovkin wanted to duplicate Mayweather’s efforts, he could jab Canelo all night long and prevent him from landing his left hook, which is his main weapon.

Golovkin’s jab is better than Mayweather’s, and he has a longer reach than Canelo. There’s a very good possibility that Golovkin would fight Canelo just like he did David Lemieux by staying on the outside and jabbing him all night. Lemieux looked invincible until he fought Golovkin. The fight ended up being a mismatch with Golovkin boxing Lemieux until stopping him in the 8th round in 2015.

The boxing fans are hoping that Canelo will finally face Golovkin this year in September to see them fight each other. Golovkin has been trying to get a fight against Canelo for 2 years now without any luck. It’s not as if Golovkin hasn’t been interested in facing the Mexican Canelo, but there’s not much he can do to force him to fight. Canelo called Golovkin out last May when he was inside the ring after beating Amir Khan. But instead of fighting Golovkin, Canelo vacated his WBC middleweight title and chose instead to fight WBO junior middleweight champion Liam Smith last September. Smith was viewed by a lot of boxing fans as the weakest of the 154lb champions Why Canelo chose to fight Smith instead of IBF champion Jermall Charlo is something a lot of fans would like to know.

It’s still too early to tell who wins the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight or whether the fight even happens. Golovkin has a big hurdle in front of him in the form of Daniel Jacobs, who he faces on March 18. Jacobs might be better than Canelo. Golovkin seems to have a great deal of respect for Jacobs, whereas he feels that Canelo is “nothing’ in his mind. In looking at how easily Jacobs dispatched Peter Quillin in 2015, it’s quite possible that he’s a better fighter than Canelo. There’s nobody on Canelo’s resume apart from Mayweather that Jacobs wouldn’t likely beat. I think Jacobs would beat everyone that Canelo has beaten without struggling against Lara and fighting a draw against Jorge Juarez the way Canelo did in 2006.