Canelo is Still Mostly the Canelo That We Remember, but GGG is Another Story

Canelo is Still Mostly the Canelo That We Remember, but GGG is Another Story

A fat and seemingly overly optimistic George Foreman, upon launching a boxing comeback after 10 years away from the ring and at the preposterously advanced age of 40, uttered the words that have since become the mantra of all formerly great fighters who are resolute in their conviction that the best of themselves is not necessarily restricted to memories of what used to be.

“The age of 40 is not a death sentence,” Big George proclaimed to much skepticism from the media, and damn if he didn’t speak that pugilistic unlikelihood to truth when, at 45, he knocked out the much-younger and favored Michael Moorer in the 10^th round on Nov. 5, 1994, to ascend to the heavyweight championship of the world for a second time.

But Father Time is the unseen opponent all fighters who have extended their fighting lives to their 40^th birthday and beyond eventually discover is less conquerable than flesh-and-blood opponents. And so it would appear to be the case for future Hall of Famer Gennadiy “GGG” Golovkin, whose unanimous-decision loss to Canelo Alvarez in their third matchup Saturday night in Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena might have conveyed more about what the future holds for him than it did for the victor.

“I have a lot left. I have a great plan, a lot of appointments. Remember, I’m still champion at 160,” insisted Golovkin (42-2-1, 37 KOs) after the longtime middleweight champion from Kazakhstan, in his super middleweight debut and possibly final ring appearance in that division, failed to annex Alvarez’s WBA, WBC, IBF, and WBO 168-pound titles in a fight that did not appear to be nearly as close as the scorecards indicated. Give Golovkin credit for a too-little, too-late rally in the later rounds, but the 115-113 tallies for Alvarez (from judges Steve Weisfeld and David Sutherland) and 116-112 (Dave Moretti) seemed more than a tad generous.

Punch statistics furnished by CompuBox are another numerical means of ascertaining who did what, and although Canelo only out-landed GGG by 130 to 120, he connected with 85 power punches to just 46 for Golovkin, whose reputation had been made through a succession of brutal knockouts, 23 straight in one elongated stretch, 18 of which came in world championship fights. No one would have, or should have, yelped in surprise had the tallies read by ring announcer David Diamonte been 117-111 (as I had it) or even 118-110 for Canelo, whose bid to move closer to his status as the sport’s pound-for-pound best, which he relinquished as the result of the transfer of his WBA (super) light heavyweight belt on a clear points loss to Dmitry Bivol on May 7 of this year, might have received only a moderate boost. That the Mexican superstar won so convincingly is especially noteworthy in light of the revelation that he had fought with a tear in the cartilage of his left wrist, which might require surgery.

“I can’t hold a glass,” Alvarez, still arguably in his prime at 32, said of his achy hand. “It’s really bad. But I’m a warrior.”

Trilogies have a special place in boxing history, with good reason. Ali-Frazier, Gatti-Ward, Bowe-Holyfield, Fury-Wilder, Barrera-Morales and similar three-act passion plays have been so compelling that each installment is memorialized as part of a more historically relevant whole. But Canelo-GGG III concluded not with an exclamation point, but with a simple period. It was a lesser version of the two preceding segments, the first being a disputed split draw on Sept. 16, 2017 (many ringside reporters thought Golovkin deserved to win what had been a very competitive bout) and a similarly engrossing do-over on Sept. 15, 2018, in which Alvarez came away with a majority-decision win.

The second fight was delayed after Alvarez twice tested positive for the banned substance clenbuterol, which he claimed was the result of ingesting contaminated Mexican beef, resulting in a six-month suspension handed down by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. Golovkin disputed that ascertainment, unequivocally stating his opinion that Canelo was a cheater. That led to both men developing harsh feelings toward the other, with Alvarez going so far as to say he “hated” GGG and would make him wait, possibly forever, for the third meeting he so obviously wanted. Thus was Saturday’s archrivalry-concluding showdown left to simmer on the back burner for four years, which now would seem to have had a more deleterious effect on GGG.

But that does not detract from what Golovkin brought to the table when he was blasting his way through the middleweight division as few champions have, matching Bernard Hopkins’ record of 20 successful defenses along the way. If historians want to place Sugar Ray Robinson, Carlos Monzon, Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Hopkins higher based on quality of opposition, fine, but there can be no argument that the manner in which GGG starched his lengthening list of victims was highly impressive.

Longtime HBO blow-by-blow announcer Jim Lampley several years ago paid Golovkin a massive compliment when he called him the “most consistently hard puncher” he had seen over an extended period, more so than even the vaunted likes of Foreman, Mike Tyson, Wladimir Klitschko, Thomas Hearns and Julian Jackson.

“I think it’s more interesting when somebody has consistent punching power over the course of a long career in a weight class the way Gennadiy did,” Lamps commented. “The fact he weighed in hundreds of times as an amateur and a profession at the same weight, 160 pounds, makes the retention of his punching power exciting, not to mention some of the cartoon-style knockouts he produced.”

If he truly intends to remain active as a fighter, even if only a facsimile of his battering-ram best, it is entirely possible that Golovkin can remain a factor in his preferred comfort zone of middleweight for a couple of more years. Jermall Charlo, Demetrius Andrade, Jaime Munguia, Chris Eubank Jr. and Carlos Adames are all in that division, and there is always the possibility that junior middles Jermell Charlo, Brian Castano, Sebastian Fundora and Tim Tszyu could move up. If fans of GGG close their eyes and imagine a best-case scenario for him moving forward, it might be for him to replicate what Hopkins did after the second of his back-to-back losses to Jermain Taylor (the first of which was at age 40), which was to move to another weight class (light heavyweight), win a world there twice and fight on for another 12 years. If it happened once, hey, maybe it could happen again.

The options for Alvarez are even more expansive. He has been a world champion at 154, 160, 168 and 175 pounds and is not averse to going wherever the biggest, highest-paying and most-legacy-enhancing fights are. He has professed to want another shot at Bivol (20-0, 11 KOs), should he get past his Nov. 5 clash with Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez (44-0, 30 KOs), which some would say is inadvisable the way their first meeting went, or he can remain at super middle and throw hands with the formidable David Benavidez (26-0, 23 KOs), arguably an even more attractive pairing. Unlike Golovkin, however, Canelo can’t afford any more hints of slippage; he has been to the top of the P4P mountain and wants to enjoy that vista again, and for a long time.

Photo credit: Al Applerose

Bernard Fernandez, named to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in the Observer category with the Class of 2020, was the recipient of numerous awards for writing excellence during his 28-year career as a sports writer for the Philadelphia Daily News. Fernandez’s first book, “Championship Rounds,” a compendium of previously published material, was released in May of last year. The sequel, “Championship Rounds, Round 2,” with a foreword by Jim Lampley, is currently out. The anthology can be ordered through Amazon.com and other book-selling websites and outlets.

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