Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez ended his relationship with Gennadiy “GGG” Golovkin with a clear, decisive and almost dominant unanimous decision victory on Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
It was a little short of “masterful,” but it was a very good performance from the Guadalajara native and one that should put him back on his pedestal after a tough loss to light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol in May.
It’s a shame more people are talking about Golovkin “getting older” instead of the solid job Alvarez was doing for much of the fight, timing Triple G, keeping him reacting and backing off. Regardless, during the first eight rounds, Alvarez proved conventional boxing wisdom absolutely correct in the idea that most offensive fighters can’t do their thing while in reverse. Golovkin, specifically, was a neutered beast when he couldn’t plant his feet and launch a proper attack with advanced mind.
And leave that “Golovkin is old” nonsense to the Wordpress boxing blogs and to the hacking media voices. In the ninth round, when Alvarez lost some steam, he wasn’t coming out first and preventing Golovkin from comfortably advancing, POOF, the old Kazakh looked young again!
I wrote about this last week, but Golovkin is one of the freshest 40-year-olds in boxing history and while some slowdown is inevitable, age was not a factor in this fight. Alvarez won this fight because of his skill, his skill and because he executed the right strategy.
By the way, how terrible were those two scores of 115-113 from judges David Sutherland and Steve Weisfeld? These were by far the judges’ worst scores of all three fights.
What’s next for both fighters? Canelo will continue Caneloando. I doubt he’s serious about revisiting the Bivol challenge, but if so…kudos to him. Golovkin, meanwhile, will likely drop back down to 160, where he still has two belts, and hold off a harmless jerk or two before retiring to his castle-mansion in Kazakhstan.
So, thus closes the Canelo-GGG trilogy, an inorganic, canned, lifeless rivalry fit for the social media generation, a generation in which how you feel about something trumps how something really is.
This is not to say that the Canelo-GGG rivalry hasn’t had its moments. Although few and far between, and mostly relegated to before and after the actual fights, there was some intrigue. But how much juice could we get from a rivalry built through jaw-dropping media reports and big-money publicity efforts? And how much juice could there be in a rivalry between fighters who owed their stardom much more to public relations than to in-ring wars?
Álvarez-Golovkin was not a “classic” rivalry in the tradition of Ali-Frazier, Leonard-Duran, Morales-Barrera or even Pacquiao-Marquez. This new era rivalry was of the boardroom variety, started by HBO Boxing desperate for something to boost their flatline product.
Golovkin was another of his star projects, albeit more successful than, say, Andre Berto. Álvarez was a more organic-type draw whose star power began on Mexican soil, earnestly and honestly, but then became significantly more cynical and calculation-tinged when he began making dollars instead of pesos.
Alvarez eventually righted his ship to some degree and gained a degree of legitimate respectability, but not after a PED scandal, a lot of soft touch, and a couple of Golovkin fights that were somewhat tame and controversial. Golovkin followed his usual path of least resistance, because, ahem, everyone was AFRAID of him, until HBO Boxing closed its doors, but not after bagging two big-money Canelo fights in which he did absolutely nothing to establish himself as the best. . time level monster that he was promoted to be. Then, for the benefit of him as a man and to his detriment as a competitor, a DAZN desperate for stars dumped a truck full of multi-million dollar cash at his feet in hopes of remaking the fabricated rivalry between Canelo and GGG.
Finally, after about three years of disputes, failures, and legal fights, DAZN got his wish and Canelo-GGG 3 passed. Whether the event will be of benefit to the streaming service’s true bottom line remains to be seen.
Perhaps the Canelo-GGG rivalry is the closest we are going to get to a true boxing rivalry in this new era. Look up and down the list of boxing’s biggest and best and you’ll see surprisingly few in-ring battles that really define resumes. 50-50 fights between the sport’s top stars rarely happen these days and when they do, as in the case of Alvarez vs. Golovkin, neither fighter seems too eager to throw caution to the wind and risk destruction for glory.
And, really, why the hell should they?
The big money is there, whether they are facing their biggest natural rival or not. For the most part, stars in the present time run around in their own pocket universes, battling it out with the “best available” unless and until something unusually large falls into their lap.
Those puzzled as to why Golovkin didn’t let go of his hands should watch his first two fights with Canelo. He really didn’t let go of his hands in those contests either. Canelo didn’t really let go of his hands in any of the three bouts either, despite the distinct feeling building that he might have stopped Golovkin this time if he had pushed hard enough.
But none of the fighters are built like old-school fighters. Risk is less and less part of the race plan these days. And even when put into a risky fight, the retreat attitude is to preserve rather than advance. This is intelligent human instinct, but it doesn’t make for such a compelling boxing product.
Álvarez and Golovkin are outstanding fighters. Alvarez has worked his way up to become a pound-for-pound fighter despite not being a natural pound-for-pound talent. He remains the undisputed undisputed super middleweight champion. Golovkin can remain the best middleweight in the world and will go on to be one of the best offensive fighters of this era.
But none have defined their greatness in the ring, in the traditional boxing sense, by overcoming the danger of life and death against an opponent who is not only willing to go to war, but also CAPABLE of pushing it to the limit.
And after Saturday’s third fight between them, they still haven’t.
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