By Sean Jones: Canelo Alvarez’s recent loss to Dmitry Bivol showed that he is vulnerable at this stage of his 17-year pro career and that he is potentially primed to be defeated by Gennadiy Golovkin on September 17.
Many boxing fans have been wrong, focusing on Golovkin’s age, 40, thinking he is the one headed for almost certain defeat in his trilogy fight against heavy favorite Canelo (57-2-2, 39 ). K.O.).
It’s the other way around. Canelo, 32, is the one with the wear and tear of a long professional career, which has spanned more than half of his life.
Canelo has been able to disguise his deterioration by beating Europe’s paper champions for the last four years. When Canelo finally got on someone with halfway decent skills in Bivol, they beat the target out of him last May.
Believe me, we would have seen Canelo exposed if he had fought David Benavidez for the past four years, but he wisely stayed away from the young gun. Now, he says he won’t be fighting Mexican boxers, which means Benavidez won’t have a chance to knock him out.
Golovkin still has the power and skills to beat Canelo, but he’s going to have to work hard for him to come out on top at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
We just saw Bivol almost lose to Canelo last May even though he totally schooled him and fought well enough to win 11-1 in rounds. If Golovkin doesn’t mind reducing Bivol’s blueprint, he can outplay Canelo and get the best of him by throwing combinations.
Golovkin has to forget about charging his single shots like he did in his first two fights against Canelo because he will never knock him out.
Canelo takes too good a punch for GGG to knock him out. It would take someone like Artur Beterbiev to stop Canelo, but he’s not crazy enough to fight him.
“The rubber match between Gennadiy Golovkin and Canelo Alvarez. It’s been four years since Gennadiy and Canelo last stepped into the ring,” Chris Mannix told DAZN Boxing Show. “What are some of the variables as you look ahead to this fight?”
“One of the key variables is the amount of downtime Gennadiy Golovkin will have to overcome,” said Mike Costello. “He has only fought once in the last sixteen months and against Ryota Murata in Japan.
“It wasn’t the most impressive performance. Now, in turn, he was coming off the longest break of his professional career. So maybe we’ll make concessions for what, to me, was a lackluster performance.
“The jab that was so effective in the first two fights [with Canelo]to me, it seemed to have lost its zap.
“Now, if we take into account the time he was out of the ring. But if you want to extend the time out of the ring, in the last three years, and I know this includes the pandemic, he has only fought twice.
“In that same period, Canelo has been much, much busier, and it has to be said, against a better level of opposition. I think the key variable is how much Golovkin is left. If it’s just what we saw against Ryota Murata, then I think it won’t be enough.
“Now, I am making allowances for being out of the ring for so long and with the issues in preparation and with the conditions around the Covid restrictions in Japan at the time.
“Here, I’m trying to find reasons rather than excuses why I should be breathing so heavily already in the second round. Why should he be concerned about body shots the way he has been for so long?
“I’m heartened by the fact that he finished very clinically the way he might have five or six years ago with just one right hand.
If you look at Murata, there were times when he was making faces in the rounds before the one that ended in the ninth.
“I just think there was too much evidence in that fight. Gennadiy Golovkin at 40 years old is nothing like the operator he was four years ago and five years ago when he faced Canelo for the first and second time,” Costello said.
“Yeah, I agree with most of that,” Mannix said. “Before Canelo, Gennadiy was an all-around type of fighter. He would make financial concessions so that meaningful fights could happen.
“Even those who didn’t get Miguel Cotto, Sergio Martinez and a while Canelo, he was willing to get in there with Daniel Jacobs, David Lemieux, whoever had to get in there would find a way to get it. done. Curtis Stevens on that list.
“Since Canelo’s second fight, it’s like he’s been, I don’t mean necessarily, he’s been taking as many non-threatening fights as he can.
“Steve Rolls, he took it as a jolt of fighting rust, anticipating getting Canelo in the fall of 2018. When that didn’t happen, he then moved on to Sergiy Derevyanchenko, then Kamil Szeremeta, then Ryota Murata.
“There were reasons for these fights. Szeremeta was a mandatory title defense. You had Murata, who had a complete version of a middleweight title. So now he is a unified champion heading into this third fight with Canelo, but he did not face Jaime Munguía; he did not face Demetrius Andrade.
“He didn’t face the type of fighters that he would normally have before his first two fights with Canelo. That makes me wonder how confident Golovkin and his team are that he can still win a big fight.
“The other part is that I mentioned Derevyanchenko. After Derevyanchenko, you had a lot of questions about Gennadiy Golovkin’s body stability, and you saw him against Murata.
“Murata hit Golovkin a couple of times to the body and made Golovkin take a deep breath and back up and regroup, and against Murata, he was able to do that because Murata is not a threatening puncher and he’s not really an elite middleweight.
“I wonder, knowing Eddy Reynoso, knowing Canelo, they will have a great game plan when it comes to a body attack. How much can he take if Canelo goes relentlessly to the body?
“Canelo is a cartoonishly good body puncher. His speed and his power in the midsection is as good as anyone in boxing. He’s going to be attacking Golovkin’s body.
“Can Golovkin, at this stage of 40 years, having been through everything he has been through, resist that kind of attack? That, to me, is the biggest question for GGG,” Mannix said.
“So we also got to questions about Canelo,” Costello said. “If we’re looking for hope, if we’re looking for reasons to look forward to this fight the way we got so excited about the first two.
“Can we ask a man who has been a professional for 17 years, more than half of his life, a question? There are a lot of tough rounds and a lot of tough fights. Another line from Manny Steward in that clinic I talked about some time ago: ‘You can often judge the age of a fighter, not by months and years, not by the schedule, but by how many tough rounds he’s had.
“Despite all of his successes, there have been many, many tough rounds in those Canelo fights. There were tough rounds for him recently against Dmitry Bivol. There was a time in the middle of the fight, quite long, of relative inactivity in which he seemed to take a vacation.
“Did he do that because he had to because he no longer has that relentless spirit in his body and mind? Something else for me is not a throwaway line; Now he plays a lot of golf.
“To get to the standard that he plays golf, you have to play a lot. I just wonder if that at this stage in his life is also a factor, and if that takes away from the amount of focus and devotion in the gym.
“I hold on to what writer Jerry Eisenberg said about Ali and Frazier back in the ’70s. When they fought, it eventually turned into a fight not for any title but for each other’s championship.
“I have that kind of feeling about these two. Once the bell rings, they will bring out the best in each other.
“I just hope in both cases; there is a semblance of what we saw in 2017 and 2018. So we can all walk away remembering a great trilogy instead of two of the three fights being memorable,” Costello said.
“Yeah, when I look back at the Bivol fight, it’s not an excuse because you have to be prepared, and Bivol was great. I don’t think Canelo took it as seriously as he should have,” Mannix said.
“I think Canelo looked at Bivol and saw the way he fought Craig Richards and saw that he couldn’t knock out Lenin Castillo. Look at the video of him in his most recent fights and say, ‘This guy is not going to be much of a threat.’
“Then you get in the ring with him, and Bivol has the performance of his life, as the guy that was coming up when he was fighting on HBO, knocking out Sullivan Barrera and some of these fringe guys at 175,” Mannix said.
