Evidently, Gennadiy Golovkin no longer harbors too much resentment over the scorecards produced in his first two fights with Canelo Alvarez.
The unified middleweight champion from Kazakhstan told the New York Post that he is not too wary of the judges who will be involved in his upcoming third fight with Alvarez in a super middleweight title unification on September 17 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Golovkin’s two fights with Alvarez were mired in controversy due to scoring, but Golovkin said he quickly overcame those verdicts.
The first fight, in 2017, ended in a hard-fought draw; many observers felt that Golovkin deserved the thumbs up on the scorecards. The second fight, in 2018, saw Alvarez win a majority decision and while there was less controversy surrounding that fight, many people believed it could have been declared a draw or a win in favor of Golovkin.
The collective results initially seemed to have soured Golovkin. Indeed, in the aftermath of Alvarez’s second fight, Golovkin made some big changes to his team: demoting his longtime manager, Tom Loeffler, and ditching trainer Abel Sanchez for Johnathon Banks.
But in the Post interview, Golovkin indicated that he has become much more complacent about those negative experiences, even if he still feels he was robbed enough. The Kazakh puncher likened the judges in those fights to “thin tissues,” implying that what he feels was the poor judgment of those judges won’t necessarily be replicated in his next trilogy of fights with Alvarez.
“I’ll be honest with you, I moved out the next day,” Golovkin said. “I haven’t thought much about it. I realized that those people who gave those scores, they were used. They were used as disposable tissues are used. It was time to use them, they were used and thrown away.”
The first fight between Álvarez and Golovkin saw judge Adalaide Byrd deliver a mind-boggling 110-118 scorecard in favor of Álvarez. Dave Moretti scored 115-113 for Golovkin, while Don Trella had it tied at 114-114.
In the second fight, Glen Feldman scored a draw, while both Dave Moretti and Steve Weisfeld made Álvarez win 113-115.
The judges and officials for Álvarez-Golovkin III have not yet been announced.
The build-up to the third Alvarez-Golovkin fight has been marked by Alvarez’s unusually aggressive attitude. Golovkin dismissed the Mexican superstar’s rhetoric, and intense downward glances, as evidence that there is “toxic” energy in his field.
“I can’t speak for him, his behavior, I think it just shows his true face,” Golovkin said. “The way he was probably raised and the level of toxicity around him, toxic people that are in his camp.”
