By Sean Jones: Gennadiy Golovkin’s trainer Johnathon Banks today revealed the game plan for how GGG plans to defeat Canelo Alvarez in their trilogy fight this Saturday.
Banks says the game plan for Golovkin (42-1-1, 37 KOs) is to outclass undisputed super middleweight champion Canelo (57-2-2, 39 KOs) through the use of volume punches.
In other words, Banks’ strategy is for Golovkin to follow the plan created by Dmitry Bivol to get past Canelo. It worked perfectly for Bivol last May to win a rather one-sided 12-round unanimous decision.
I mean, it wasn’t a one-sided decision with the judging team that was assigned to the fight at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, but the fight went to Bivol alone, who appeared to win 11-1 in rounds.
For Golovkin to get past Canelo, he’s going to need to throw combinations like Bivol because he’s not going to get past the Mexican star if he fights like he did in the first two Canelo-Golovkin fights.
In those two fights, Golovkin and Canelo took turns hitting each other with hard shots, and there wasn’t a huge difference in terms of punches landed.
“Knowing it’s going to be a close fight, the goal is to get past your opponent,” Johnathon Banks told Fight Hub TV of his game plan for Golovkin to defeat Canelo Alvarez.
“You put on your helmet, you go to work and you get to work. the goal is for him [Gennadiy] to outplay your opponent. The two fighters are significantly different from the first two fights.
“You only one who kept his weight was G [Golovkin]. Canelo moved up to light heavyweight, super middleweight. He’s [Canelo] a different type of fighter than he was in those two fights, and it will be a little easier to get past him.
“Getting over it doesn’t mean it will be an easy fight. It’s just going to be a little easier to get over it. [Canelo] because it no longer throws volume hits like it used to. Canelo doesn’t throw volume shots like he used to.
“The last few fights, it was all about putting guys down, taking, taking, landing a punch. Again, this is nothing negative about Canelo. I’m just dissecting what he’s doing. He is not a volume puncher like he used to be.
“He has become a ruthless one-punch knockout guy, especially what he did to Kovalev. He looks at himself, ‘Why not be the same guy? He took me this far, so why not do it? In that sense, G would be able to outplay him, but he still has to watch out for these huge power shots to come.
“I don’t have anything to say about it because that’s people’s opinion,” Banks said when told that fans think the 40-year-old Golovkin can’t get past Canelo.
“I have my mindset of what I want to do and what I want to see. So I have to get out of it. Yes, he’s older, but he still goes to work. I still think he can outplay his opponent, especially when you have a guy who is just looking to walk and throw one punch at a time.
“It’s going to be tough because you have to watch out for hard hits, but you can still be a volume hitter. If GGG throws 35 punches per round, that will be enough to get past Canelo because he doesn’t throw that many punches per round.
“He just blocks, blocks and just looks for that one punch that will have a big impact on his opponent. Will he hurt GGG or will GGG hurt him? That is what we have to wait for.
“Neither fighter has touched the canvas, and that is why this fight is written 12 rounds. Yes, Canelo says that he is coming to destroy GGG, but GGG has never been destroyed. No one knows what that looks like, so it will be news to everyone if it happens.
“I never said ‘return to the body.’ I said he has to start going to the body because he wasn’t a body hitter. She probably hit him [Canelo] with four body shots in 24 rounds. That’s not a body puncher.
“That does not go to the body. We have to go to the body. We have to hit it everywhere. Arms, elbow, stomach, chest, shoulder, everywhere. We are going to hit him so much that he feels surrounded.
“That’s part of going to work. Let your hands hit it. I’m not trying to recreate anything he did in either fight. I’m trying to get him to pick up the pace and loosen his hands because I think that would benefit him more.
“I don’t care if you get tired on 10, 11 and 12,” Banks said when asked what he was doing to help Golovkin not get tired in the later rounds. “That’s the difference between 90% of the conditioning coaches you talk to.
“They tell a fighter: ‘We’re going to train so you don’t get tired.’ I don’t want to train a fighter so he doesn’t get tired. I want you to be able to hold yourself back while you’re tired because you don’t know which fighter is going to push you to the point where you get tired.
“If you can keep your composure and you know how to fight when you’re tired, then how hard is it going to be to beat a guy who keeps his composure while he’s tired?
“The goal is to go to work. We are not worried about your [Golovkin] fuel tank because we have seen it empty and we have seen it full. We’ve done all of this at camp, you’ve got a full tank and let’s go.
“It’s not going to be a problem if he runs out of fuel because he knows how to fight. He has been fighting in the gym the longest while he was tired. We’ve been pushing it. Her goal and his behavior is to get in there and let go of her hands.
You can’t afford to worry about anything else. I thought G won the first fight, and I thought the second fight was closer to a draw. When you have a fighter going backwards, the judges look at the fighter’s feet.
“When you look at the feet, you are assuming that the fighter who is advancing is winning. But the fighter hitting backwards, does that mean the fighter going forward is winning?
“No, that just means the direction the fighter is going. If we’re fighting and you come forward, and I come back, hitting you and hitting you. Does that mean you’re winning? Yes, you are the aggressor. Why are you winning the round when you’re not landing the punches?
“I’m landing most of the punches. We do double work, triple work, and cover all of our bases so GGG is in shape to let his hands go for 12 rounds.
“Our talks are the first two fights; you have to put them in your rear view mirror because that’s where they are. For starters, it doesn’t help that we have the same judges as the first two fights.
“It doesn’t help that they didn’t give us the rounds that most of the fans were cheering for. [Golovkin] victorious. They didn’t even give it to him. They only gave him four shots. So that doesn’t help, but that’s for me to consider, not him.
“His job is to go in and fight. The plan that we have should lead to Gennadiy winning the fight,” Banks said.
