Gennady Golovkin and Canelo Alvarez have had their rematch. This time it reached a conclusion.
It seemed like the highly anticipated rematch had a bit of work to do to wake the crowd up after an absurd ninety minutes of downtime, but really all they had to do was face off and the place was hot. Both men opened focused on their jab. Gennady Golovkin’s (38-1-1, 34 KOs) seemed stronger, but few power punches were landed in the opening frame. Canelo Alvarez (50-1-2, 34), notably less muscular than last time, barely nicked it on a couple left hooks on my card. He got the left hook going even better in the second round to clearly win that one. His speed was the difference early. Golovkin came out with more aggression in the third in response. GGG was just too slow to land much cleanly though. The third was close like the first, but I still preferred the Mexican’s combinations over Golovkin’s activity.
Canelo’s forward pressure and aggression was finally met fully by the Kazakh star in the fourth. The first two minutes were toe to toe action. Gennady got in a beautiful uppercut, his best shot in the first third of the fight. He also did well to turn his younger opponent. I scored the round for him, though Canelo did get some good body work in at the end. The Mexican PPV draw continued to come forward in the fifth and found more success. A nice right hand clipped GGG over the top in the round’s first half. He jabbed well and landed to the body in the round’s second half. He was just too fast and too active to not score it for him. Abel Sanchez sounded concerned in between rounds too. The sixth was no different. I had the aggressive, younger Mexican up five rounds to one at the half way point.
The aging longtime middleweight destroyer was just plain tentative to start the second half of the fight. Canelo kept pushing him back and he didn’t seem to know what exactly to do with that. He didn’t take advantage of Alvarez tiring a bit early. He just circled away doing nothing. At the end of the round he did open up a bit though. Abel Sanchez tried to motivate him further in between rounds by telling him that he’s losing too, which he was on my card. The eighth saw Canelo landing several right hands to extend his lead. He was really starting to pull away here in terms of scoring. He did seem to be slowing down a bit at the end of the round though.
An increasingly desperate GGG came out aggressive in the ninth and ate a few nice counters for it. Clean shots were just not there for him still. He got a left hook in during the last minute, but it was hardly enough to make up for all of Canelo’s work. Gennady did get a great right hand in early in the tenth at least. He got a second one in thirty seconds later which really got the crowd going. Canelo seemed to take it okay. He definitely lost his first round in a while though. I still had him up seven rounds to three going into the championship rounds.
The tone was dramatically different going into the eleventh. Canelo was backing up for the first time as GGG went on a vintage attack. He started coming forward again as Golovkin stopped letting his hands go. He had something there, but he didn’t pursue it and Canelo was alive again at the end of the eleventh. The defending titleholder came out with beautiful shots to start the final round too. This was a different fight. Canelo fired back well, but he was getting the worst of it for the most part. GGG seemed to crash though in the second half of the round as momentum shifted back to the younger Mexican. I still thought Gennady’s opening work was the best stuff of the round though.
I ended up with a rapidly closing scorecard of 115-113 for Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Golovkin did amazing work down the stretch, but I had him down too much for him to pull it off on my card at least. I also figured the official judges would side with me before the cards were read. We know how they always love Canelo and he was the front foot aggressor here, something else official judges tend to like.
The first official card came back a 114-114 draw while the second two came back 115-113 for Canelo. We have a new, two belt middleweight champion. People will cry about these cards like they always do when someone rallies big late and doesn’t get the decision, but they were fair and reasonable. A razor close fight came back with razor close cards. That is how it is supposed to work. More importantly, it was an excellent fight. The sequel was better than the original.
Post fight Canelo didn’t have much interesting to say and GGG didn’t say anything at all. He walked out of the ring without as much as doing an interview. It was a strange and sort of childish exit for the former middleweight champion.
