Canelo-GGG III: Odds and Ends

Canelo-GGG III: Odds and Ends

It’s Mexican Independence Day Weekend and I am in Las Vegas so this must be boxing. Indeed, for most of the last three decades, the desert gambling mecca has hitched a big prizefight to the holiday festivities. Actually, it’s been the other way around. The festivities are an extension of the fight, not vice versa.

Tomorrow’s match-up between Canelo Alvarez and Gennadiy Golovkin is unusual in several respects. There have been a number of famous trilogies in boxing, but rarely have all three fights been at the same venue. By and large, the third leg of trilogy is a rubber match. But the first fight ended in a draw, so one can’t really use that terminology, albeit in the eyes of most neutral observers the series is deadlocked at 1-1.

The 1991 fight between Julio Cesar Chavez and Lonnie Smith at the Mirage started the ball rolling with respect to important Mexican Independence Day Weekend fights in Las Vegas. The fight wasn’t heavily promoted. In fact, the hotel’s owner Steve Wynn didn’t want it. He was legally bound to let Don King promote a fight on his property. This was written into the out-of-court settlement that allowed Wynn to go forward with the Douglas-Holyfield fight which he snatched from clutches of King.

Although Chavez-Smith wasn’t well-advertised and Julio Cesar Chavez was a massive favorite, it drew well (11,314 paid). Of more importance to Las Vegas casino operators, the Mexican and Mexican-American visitors were good spenders. Casinos then started funneling some of their marketing dollars into this demographic which was previously “under-served.” And boxing became the lure on the two big Mexican holiday weekends, Cinco De Mayo and Independence Day.

Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, the pride of Guadalajara (and indeed all of Mexico), will be making his 10^th appearance in Las Vegas on a Mexican holiday weekend (evenly divided between Cinco de Mayo and Independence Day). This ties him with Oscar De La Hoya who had six of his 10 holiday fights on Mexican Independence Day. The biggest of the bunch was Oscar’s Sept. 18, 1999 fight with Felix Trinidad at Mandalay Bay, a controversial decision that went against him.

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As of this writing, Canelo Alvarez is a consensus 9/2 (minus-450 favorite). This is a startling turn-about.

According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, GGG was in the vicinity of a 3/2 favorite in each of the previous meetings: minus-155 in 2017 and minus-145 in 2018, odds prevalent in Las Vegas on the eves of the fights.

Since their last encounter, Canelo has answered the bell for 72 rounds, going 7-1 including stoppages of Rocky Fielding, Sergey Kovalev, Avni Yildirim, Billy Joe Saunders, and Caleb Plant. Golovkin has had only four fights in the interim, answering the bell for only 32 rounds including a hard-fought, 12-round decision over Sergiy Derevyanchenko.

But during the interim, GGG turned 40, a fact that weighed heavily in setting the odds. He’s eight years and three months older than Canelo Alvarez who at age 32 is theoretically still in his prime.

Consistent with the odds, all of  the polls for the trilogy fight show a sharp skewing toward the Mexican redhead. Regular TSS contributor Matt McGrain concurs with the consensus. Here’s his pick:

“Nobody loves the scoring for some of what has gone before between Golovkin and Alvarez, but there are degrees of discomfort.  What is undeniable, whatever your own scorecards may read, is the discomfort caused in Golovkin by the combination of speed and chin possessed by Alvarez.  His edge in speed has only increased since 2017.  Expect another decision for Canelo, with less complaining on Twitter in the aftermath than we saw in 2017 or 2018.”

And here’s a contrary viewpoint from TSS New England correspondent Jeffrey Freeman:

“Conventional wisdom says that Canelo wins, maybe even stopping GGG late. I don’t subscribe to that misbegotten wisdom. I say Gennady Golovkin uses his stiff jab, iron chin and his iron will to grind out a close decision win to tie the series at 1-1-1. Come on guys, Canelo just got beat up bad by the bigger Bivol. The weight hopping is catching up to him and Golovkin is actually the fresher fighter.”

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