By Adam Baskin: Canelo Alvarez says he can’t lose his fight against Gennadiy Golovkin next week on Saturday. The Mexican star has put too much work into training for the trilogy fight with Golovkin (42-1-1, 37 KOs), 40, to afford to lose.
Golovkin is the underdog among oddsmakers, and based on how he looks in his last fights since 2019, Canelo (57-2-2, 39 KOs) has little to worry about on Sept. 17.
The biggest issue for Canelo is whether his chronically poor cardio will resurface for this fight, as we saw last May when he ran out of gas after two rounds against Dmitry Bivol.
Interestingly, Canelo thinks he won the first five or six rounds of that fight with Bivol, and thinks he’ll beat him “easily” in the rematch. That is not the same fight that the fans saw.
“Losing is not an option for me, but you take a risk. You take the best fights, the toughest fights out there. Maybe you will lose one day,” Canelo Alvarez told Matchroom Boxing about his fight next Saturday against Gennadiy Golovkin.
“I am happy doing these kinds of fights because they make me feel good. I think my legacy is going up with these kinds of fights, but I learned a lot and I’m not ashamed of that because I challenge myself to be great,” Canelo said. “I’m going to keep doing it.
“With Bivol, I am at my best. Unfortunately, I have a lot of things in my training camp. I lost, but I’m going to get my chance in the near future. That is the difference. The difference is that I was at my best when I lost to Bivol.
“He wasn’t in my weight class, but I think I can beat him easily, but things happen. I take that as experience,” Canelo said of his fight against Bivol. “I won the first five or six rounds, but then I got tired. That was what happened. He is not better than me.
“I always tell my little boy, ‘It’s not the end of the world if you lose. You are in a sport and you can win or you can lose. No matter. It’s not the end of the world.’ You have to keep going and keep fighting, and one day you will be the best,” Canelo said.
