What should we expect in the year’s biggest rematch?
Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (49-1-2, 34 KOs) seems like he was always going to be a star. How could a talented red head in Mexico ever be anything else? Born into a boxing family, young Saul was the last of seven boys and a sister. All seven Alvarez boys have taken at least one professional fight. Ricardo, Ramon, and Rigoberto became successful domestic level fighters in Mexico as well with Rigoberto even briefly holding an interim world title.
When one thinks about how older brothers treat younger brothers combined with how kids treat kids that are different, it suddenly makes sense that a redhead in Mexico with six older brothers would end up a fighter at a young age. Indeed, only at 15 years old, Canelo, the Spanish word for cinnamon turned into a grammatically masculine form, fought his first professional fight.
By 2010, five years later, Canelo was a rising sensation on the Mexican domestic scene. While he was already main eventing cards to big audiences south of the border before even his 20th birthday, his big American breakthrough came against Jose Miguel Cotto on the PPV undercard of Floyd Mayweather Jr’s fight with Shane Mosley. After surviving some early drama in that fight, the Canelo hype train was roaring down the tracks in the United States.
Four fights later in 2011, Canelo picked up his first belt against England’s Matthew Hatton. After a couple easy defenses, it is sort of forgotten now how the Mexican legend in the making insisted on fighting basically everyone available at the weight. When Josesito Lopez derailed his plans of a Victor Ortiz fight, Canelo insisted on fighting Lopez. When Austin Trout looked like a terrible matchup after upsetting Miguel Cotto, Canelo insisted on fighting him.
At 23 years old, Saul Alvarez even insisted on fighting Floyd Mayweather Jr. While that night remains the only blemish on his record, it didn’t slow him down. Canelo’s next four opponents were Alfredo Angulo, the extremely avoided Erislandy Lara, James Kirkland, and Miguel Cotto, all wins. This was a murderer’s row of opponents. Lara was a particularly bold selection given his world class skills and complete lack of drawing power. In the end, Canelo had his hand raised all four times.
It was that last fight where Canelo picked up his public perception problem though. Miguel Cotto was coming off a bit of a super fight in which he moved up and took on longtime middleweight champion Sergio Martinez, winning in shockingly dominant fashion. Cotto wasn’t really a middleweight, but Canelo was struggling to make junior middleweight so they decided to fight at 155 lbs, one pound into the middleweight division. When Canelo narrowly won, he picked up Cotto’s middleweight belt as sort of an afterthought.
The problem here was Gennady Golovkin (38-0-1, 34 KOs). Fans were excited to see ultra popular new middleweight titleholder Canelo in against who they believed was the best middleweight in the world. Given that Golovkin was the mandatory challenger to the belt Canelo had just won, it seemed a logical matchup that would excite the sport. Yet, instead of fighting his mandatory challenger and the man everyone wanted to see him in against, Canelo instead met glass chinned Amir Khan moving up from welterweight two divisions down.
This fight created a lot of outrage and tarnished the reputation that the young Mexican star had built to some. I don’t think it was a case of Golovkin being ducked directly by Canelo, however. Alvarez’s promoter, Golden Boy, had recently lost basically all their top fighters to then upstart Premier Boxing Champions outfit. I read the situation as Golden Boy himself, Oscar De La Hoya, not being willing to risk his only real moneymaker left, but the truth didn’t really matter here. The perception was that Canelo was afraid of Gennady Golovkin.
It didn’t help when Canelo would drop a tough line about Golovkin after a fight only not to meet him next, again and again. To make matters even worse, when the WBC ordered Canelo to defend his title against the Kazakh star, he and his team instead decided to essentially throw the belt away and cut all ties to the sanctioning body instead of taking the fight.
Following the poorly received Khan fight, Alvarez dropped back down to junior middleweight for one fight to win another belt against England’s Liam Smith in a fight no one was asking for while the world clamored for the Golovkin fight. Most recently, Canelo moved up past middleweight even to take what seemed like an easy big money fight against overmatched but popular fellow countryman Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. Suddenly Canelo, whose team had always dodged the Golovkin fight on the idea that Canelo wasn’t really a middleweight, had taken a fight up above that within the super middleweight limit.
Gennady Golovkin took his own unique path to get to this moment. A 2004 Olympic silver medalist, GGG initially signed a German promotional contract and looked to build his career in that excellent fight country. While the wins and knockouts piled up, Golovkin really struggled to build his star. Even after winning his first world title in 2010, Gennady still found himself unable to lure in the top German fighters to build his name against.
Eventually the man known as Triple G just stopped trying and called a mid-career audible by uprooting his life to the United States. This would prove to be the best decision that the Kazakh knockout artist has made. HBO elected to broadcast his first defense stateside and instantly he was off to the races thanks to their support. His fight with Grzegorz Proksa was a ratings disaster, but HBO could see the potential and decided to build him up. One by one, known names like Gabriel Rosado, Curtis Stevens, Daniel Geale, Martin Murray, and more fell before him without a single fighter making it the distance. The mixture of Golovkin’s savage knockouts in the ring and his charming, affable, almost comedic persona outside of it was a hit with American audiences.
It was a fight with Marco Antonio Rubio that planted the seeds for GGG’s second belt in the division. When it became unclear whether or not the WBC middleweight title would be defended by the Cotto/Canelo winner as both were really junior middleweights, the organization created an interim title just in case it was needed. If the winner of that fight were to drop back to junior middleweight, then the interim champion could be elevated to the status of full champion. If not then two could be ordered to fight. What could go wrong?
Canelo’s refusal to fight Golovkin at that time is now a part of this legend that we already discussed above, but by him doing so Golovkin’s interim belt was elevated to full WBC title status and he became a unified titleholder. A dominant stoppage win over fellow power puncher David Lemiuex gave him his third belt in the division. Only Billy Joe Saunders’s WBO belt still eluded GGG on his stated question to become undisputed. He was unable to ever secure that fight.
Golovkin’s two most recent fights coming into the first Canelo showdown tell a story separate from belts though. Two years ago, Golovkin countered Canelo’s much derided fight against welterweight Amir Khan by bringing up his own welterweight in Kell Brook to fight. Though Golovkin literally broke Brook’s face and stopped him in only five rounds, he also got hit a lot along the way. It was the first time he had really looked vulnerable. Then, defending against a large, athletic middleweight in Daniel Jacobs in March of last year, GGG looked downright human in only narrowly winning a decision in a fight that could have been scored either way.
At 35, this could all have meant that the Gennady Golovkin train was slowing down naturally due to age. I more read it as Brook and Jacobs being really good fighters, but the idea that Team Canelo only took the fight because they believe Golovkin is a little past it is now part of the narrative too. Maybe there is some truth to it. I can only imagine that fighting a man probably does become a little more appealing when he is not on a twenty three fight knockout streak.
That is the story on how the first fight became what it was in terms of the fighters’ journeys and their particular joined narrative. When the two men got into the ring, we were treated with a damn good fight too. It wasn’t the war maybe everyone was dreaming about going into it, but it was a high level tactical affair that pleased fight fans across the board. That is, it made them happy until the decision was read, but we’re getting there.
The fight opened as I thought it would. Canelo started brilliantly. He was clearly the faster, more athletic man and he ripped counters beautifully to the body. GGG looked downright nervous and uncertain in there after the first few rounds. The Mexican superstar ended up easing off the gas a bit in the midrounds, however. Whether it was fatigue or strategic, his rapid backward movement in these rounds is what has since been referred to as his running by his detractors, including from inside Golovkin’s camp. Looking back at my recap from that night, I used the word too. GGG didn’t get huge work done, but he kept his steady pressure on and looked to be entirely taking over the fight. Alvarez did rebound late, however. He started winning the beginnings of rounds big in the last third of the fight. He couldn’t sustain it over three minutes, but he definitely gave himself an argument in several late rounds.
I scored the fight 115-113 for GGG. Harold Lederman scored it 116-112 for the same man. One of the scores came back the same as mine and another as a 114-114 draw. While too much has been made about the end result of a draw in my view, there is no question that Adalaide Byrd’s downright farcical 118-110 in Canelo’s favor was a problem. That is one of the single worst scorecards turned in in modern boxing history. I had no problem with the draw though, I repeat. My card was one round away from a draw and there were plenty of close ones in there. That drama was overblown at the time.
Strangely, it wasn’t the end of their drama either. The lucrative and logical rematch was signed on for Cinco de Mayo weekend in January. All seemed well until early March when Canelo failed a drug test for clenbuterol back in Mexico. Now Mexican beef in that country is legitimately tainted with it and that was his team’s logical explanation, but eye brows were raised. As a PED, clenbuterol helps with weight cutting and Canelo has always struggled with that.
I dismissed this as non-consequential for some time. As if boxing would ever pass up a big money match to do the right thing and suspend a fighter for a failed drug test. Color me surprised, that is exactly what the Nevada State Athletic Commission did. The fight was off. GGG ended up taking a tuneup to save the date against Vanes Martirosyan, but reports suggest that the difference between what he would have taken home against Canelo versus what he ended up earning against his replacement foe cost him around $20 million dollars. Understandably angry, Golovkin spent quite a bit of time insisting that he will need a bigger cut of the purse now that Canelo has cost him money and tainted his own reputation. After a lot of public squabbling and some legitimate tension on whether or not the rematch would ever happen, it was signed once again in June.
Now the rematch is two days away and is almost more interesting thanks to all of this. I honestly believe Gennady Golovkin froze up a bit under the lights the first time out to open the fight. Canelo was confident while Golovkin was nervous. He settled in and took over after the battle’s first third, but it wasn’t the start he wanted. I don’t think that will happen again. The bad blood that has developed between the two men since the rematch first fell apart is not promotional theatrics. There is anger here. GGG resents Canelo for the lost income, time, and belt that he had to give up to take the rematch part two. Canelo resents Gennady for all accusations of the Mexican star being a drug cheat.
I expect Golovkin to be more focused, determined, and aggressive out of the gate. The question is how exactly that impacts the fight. He’s 36 now while Canelo is still shy of 30. It was a razor close fight and if one man has improved since then, it will logically be the man not closing in on 40. It makes sense then that maybe Gennady’s rage will play right into the early countering Alvarez had so much success with. But then, what about Canelo? I would think he’d be an improved fighter looking to implement a gameplan with some proven success against an increasingly aging fighter, but the drug test does loom. What if he was always on PEDs and now can’t be? I’ve read some speculation that he does look smaller this go around. He had some stamina issues in the first fight too. Will they be worse now? Furthermore, there is his anger to account for too. He moved backwards so quickly in the middle of the last fight that the word running has been thrown around ever since. What happen if he stands in the pocket and does try to knockout the Kazakh power puncher instead like he’s claiming he will? We’d have some fun, but would he? If I was forced to pick here, I’d go with the younger and potentially still improving Canelo Alvarez by decision. Whether he deserves it or not.
I was excited for the first fight as it was one of the biggest and best fights that could be made and I’m even more excited for the rematch. $85 is a steep price for the PPV, but I don’t think a true fight fan can pass it up. The high level first fight plus its controversial ending and all the fallout from their failed first rematch attempt in May has only added to the intrigue in my view. The show begins at 9 PM Eastern, primarily on HBO PPV. The international feed will be available for streamers for the same price as well using either the FITE app or Golden Boy’s ringtv.com website.
