By: Sean Crose
It’s no surprise that there is bad blood between Gennady Golovkin and Canelo Alvarez. They have fought tooth and nail twice, after all. Not only that, each of his two fights has ended in a controversial decision. However, to make things really hostile, Golovkin has suggested that Canelo intentionally ingested the banned substance that he was ultimately suspended for having in his system between their first and second fights. The two fighters, simply put, are not huge fans of each other. And Canelo wants to settle things once and for all when he fights Golovkin for the third time this weekend at T-Mobil Arena in Las Vegas. In other words, he wants to knock out his arch rival.
“Look,” Canelo told the media during fight week, “that’s my goal for this fight (knock out Golovkin), but I’m going to keep my mind focused on whether the knockout goes well, if not, I’m ready to go. 12. rounds.” Canelo is smart to stick with that strategy. The truth is that both he and Golovkin have granite chins. The shots they’ve thrown and landed on each other over the course of 72 rounds have been hellish, but neither of them have ever really come close to being knocked down, let alone stopped.
Canelo, however, is aware of how tough and talented his old rival is. “He did a very good job,” he said of the last time Golovkin stepped into the ring, when he stopped Ryoto Murata in nine. “He is the same fighter. He is strong, he takes hits, he hits hard.” Make no mistake about it, Canelo knows what he’s up against when he steps into the ring at T-Mobile Arena this Saturday night. “For this camp,” Canelo said, “I started running three times a week again.” Running is something the man has avoided for a while because of his knees. For Golovkin, however, Canelo has gone all out.
Of course, the redheaded star is more motivated to win and win big this weekend, given his loss to Dmitry Bivol last spring. However, Canelo was moving up in weight for it, hoping to once again get a big win in the light heavyweight division, as he had against Sergey Kovalev several years earlier. Though he fell short in trying to wrest Bivol’s WBA belt from his gloved hands, Canelo will face Golovkin at super middleweight for the first time this Saturday (both of his previous fights were for middleweight dominance). “The thing I feel the best about is at 168,” Canelo said.
Which of course means that Canelo will be fighting at his natural weight this Saturday night, a tough night for anyone, even Gennady Golovkin.
