Why Canelo Alvarez Should Not Rush into a Fight with Gennady Golovkin
It seems that everyone in the boxing world wants Canelo Alvarez to fight Gennady Golovkin. On HBO’s The Fight Game, host Jim Lampley went so far as to suggest the proposed superfight could somehow help the sport bounce back from the “profoundly negative impression” last year’s long-awaited Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao bout left among viewers.
But is Alvarez, 25, ready for such a stern test?
He was in a similar situation earlier in his career, and proved that he wasn’t.
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In 2013, a 23-year-old Alvarez seized the biggest and most challenging opportunity of his relatively short prizefighting career when he dared seizing the mantle of biggest boxing superstar from longtime crown-wearer Mayweather.
But Alvarez wasn’t ready. Despite his best intentions, Mayweather fairly easily outboxed Alvarez over 12 rounds to stave off boxing’s presumed next big thing.
Still the heir apparent to the retired Mayweather, what should Alvarez do now?
Despite what critics such at The Sweet Science’s Frank Lotierzo might have you believe, Alvarez has gotten better as a fighter since the loss to Mayweather. The natural counterpuncher knew he had to press the action to get the nod over southpaw stylist Erislandy Lara in 2014, and his speed, timing and smart offense helped him outbox Miguel Cotto just last year.
The stubborn and sometimes confused Alvarez who lost to Mayweather three years ago wouldn’t have won either of those fights.
But is he ready for Golovkin?
The truth is, we just don’t know. I’m sure if you ask him, Alvarez would say he feels ready. But such was the case of every other fighter Golovkin has blasted out over the last few years, too. In fact, the last man to catch a Golovkin fade, Dominic Wade, told FightHype (h/t Wil Esco at Bad Left Hook) beforehand that he might actually break Golovkin’s face when the two traded leather.
Golovkin hammered Wade into the ground like a nail in just two rounds.
Wade, of course, is a lifelong middleweight. But Alvarez? He leapt into boxing at the tender age of 15 as a welterweight and has never faced anyone over 155 pounds.
In short, Alvarez is a junior middleweight who uses his status as the star to save his body the trouble of shaving off that last pound to make the division’s 154-pound limit. You might not like it, but that’s the way boxing works these days. His predecessor as lineal middleweight champion, Cotto, did the same and others will very likely do it after him.
Professional fighters put their lives on the line in every fight. Can you really blame them for wanting every possible advantage they can muster?
Should Golovkin, an undefeated monster with 22 straight knockouts, be anyone’s first true 160-pound opponent?
On a side note, the middleweight division is defined as a 160-pound limit. That’s the most a fighter can weigh to be considered a middleweight. It doesn’t mean the fighter has to weigh 160 pounds or that two fighters cannot enter into an agreement to weigh less on fight night.
It’s a limit, people. A limit.
An even more troubling aspect of the situation is that everyone seems to conclude Alvarez, the presumed A-side of the proposed promotion, should be the one to concede all matters of negotiation to the other side. But he's a fighter who has already competed in four different weight divisions against quite easily better overall competition and is the reigning middleweight champion.
In what kind of world does that make sense?
Part of it might be how just plain likeable Golovkin is. He’s a great fighter who butchers opponents like a young Mike Tyson but he smiles and treats people with respect like Evander Holyfield. He’s a promoter’s dream, and Tom Loeffler of K2 Promotions has done an outstanding job of positioning the Kazakh-born 33-year-old as being seen as the most avoided fighter in the world today.
The narrative most subscribe to is that other fighters fear facing Golovkin, so they just don’t do it.
“GGG has always said he wants to unify the middleweight division and if there was a big fight at 168, he would consider it, which both [Carl] Froch, [Julio Cesar] Chavez and now even [Gilberto] Ramirez would be, all 168 pound champions—but not if there is a middleweight champion willing to fight him," said Loeffler. "That's has always been his priority. The problem before was that [Felix] Sturm, Sergio [Martinez] and [Peter] Quillin all refused to fight [him].”
But according to TheShadowLeague.com’s Rhett Butler, there was a big fight at the weight Golovkin considered and declined. Former lineal super middleweight champion Andre Ward has been adamant that his team offered Golovkin a fight that was ultimately turned down by GGG.
“It’s clear to me that Golovkin doesn’t want to fight,” said Ward. “[He] doesn’t want to fight and they do a good game, they do a lot of talking from his side and that’s cool, but the way I was raised in the boxing game and the way I came up, it’s very simple.”
Ward, now a light heavyweight on his way to a fall showdown with the Golovkin-like 175-pounder Sergey Kovalev, said he doesn’t expect a bout with Golovkin to ever happen.
"If two guys want to fight, you go through the process to make the fight, you call my people, I call your people,” Ward told Butler. “We did that. We made him an offer to fight he refused to fight. He turned it down and I wish him nothing but the best. But me going up in weight changes the landscape. It's just not going to work.”
Loeffler told me there were “no discussions for a Ward fight,” but then almost immediately admitted that some kind of offer had come from Ward’s camp at some point last year.
“When they made an offer to fight Ward, we had already announced the Lemieux fight and GGG was the mandatory for the winner of Cotto-Canelo in the next fight, which [Ward’s promoter] was naturally aware of,” Loeffler explained.
There’s nothing wrong with Golovkin turning down the fight, and wanting to unify the middleweight championship. In fact, it’s admirable in today’s title-proliferated world, and maybe Golovkin thought better of having Ward be the super middleweight champion he fights first.
Shouldn’t the same apply to Alvarez?
In fact, with WBO titleholder BJ Saunder still out and Alvarez likely not yet comfortable as a true middleweight, what’s the rush to make Canelo-Golovkin happen so soon?
Here’s an idea. Why not let the best fight possible emerge rather than rushing Alvarez into the lion’s den to make a quick buck?
On the undercard of Alvarez-Khan last week, both former middleweight titleholder David Lemieux and veteran contender Curtis Stevens looked like good opponents to help Alvarez test the middleweight waters.
Either would be a fun fight, one that could help Alvarez prepare for Golovkin at 160.
In the meantime, Golovkin can keep butchering the sacrificial lambs HBO has been feeding him over the last couple of years in anticipation of making him into the superstar fighter they’ve coveted since Mayweather left for Showtime. Everyone can just stay mad and keep pretending it’s okay to blame Alvarez for not rushing to do something he’s already done, move up in weight, that Golovkin’s never had to do.
In fact, we can also all forget it was Alvarez who was once in Golovkin’s position of needing a superfight on pay-per-view to solidify his standing in a sport driven by the direct relationship the consumer has with the buy button on the cable box.
When Alvarez fought Mayweather, it was Alvarez who bit the bullet and agreed to a catchweight of 152 pounds. Would Golovkin do the same to make the fight with Alvarez?
“We have always been clear that GGG would go down to 154 only to fight Floyd [Mayweather] because Floyd had two world titles at 154,” said Loeffler.
How about 156 or 157? Split the difference?
“Canelo is the WBC and lineal middleweight champion, so it wouldn't respect the history of middleweight division if two middleweight champions did a unification fight at a weight below middleweight,” said Loeffler.
"To my knowledge, whenever there was a catchweight discussed for super fights in boxing it was never between two champions in the same division.”
Perhaps fittingly, a quick glance over Alvarez’s record shows he was Ring Magazine’s 154-pound champion when he faced welterweight champion Mayweather in 2013 at that 152-pound catchweight.
Unless otherwise noted, all quotes and information was obtained firsthand.
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