LAS VEGAS — A lot has changed in the four years since Gennady Golovkin last fought Canelo Alvarez at T-Mobile Arena. Alvarez reached even greater heights by defeating Golovkin in his second fight.
Alvarez won the light heavyweight title, became the undisputed super-middleweight champion, and was widely regarded as the number one pound-for-pound fighter in boxing. Alvarez is a whopping -500 favorite at his BetMGM, this time for the undisputed super-middleweight championship, when he reunited in his trilogy match at T-Mobile Arena on Saturday.
Most of the media coverage of the first two bouts saw it as a win for Golovkin. On September 16, 2017, their first fight was a split draw, and Golovkin suffered the first scratch on his record after his 37-game winning streak to kick off his career. Adalaide Byrd had a ridiculously wrong card against Alvarez where he was 10-2. Don Torrera scored a draw, but this was not an unfair verdict and gave Álvarez the seventh, Golovkin’s best round, meaning instead of Golovkin winning by split decision, the match ended in a split his draw. was.
A rematch took place on September 15, 2018, with Alvarez winning by majority vote. After this two fights of his, six scorecards were turned in. Alvarez was ahead with his 3 points, 2 to draw and Golovkin was ahead with his 1.
The verdict for each of these fights has been much debated, but if a fighter doesn’t want to be at the mercy of judging, the fight must end.
But if Golovkin had won those two, history would have been very different. He came into his trilogy match on Saturday with his 44-0 record and could match Floyd’s Mayweather’s 50-0 record.
And with a 44-0 record and 37 knockouts, he will at least be talked about as the greatest middleweight of all time.
As it stands, he took part in Saturday’s bout and is considered the best middleweight of his time, but is not often included in the all-time great middleweight debate. is not considered one of the pound-for-pound of
Some of it is due to his age. The 40-year-old isn’t as fast or as explosive as he used to be. But Mayweather wasn’t as quick or explosive as when he put up his 6-8 win at the end of his illustrious career.
There’s also a bitterness stuck in Golovkin. Since his second fight with Alvarez, he has had to play a secondary role, but he also deeply believes he won. And he’s not all that crazy about where he is in the promotion at this stage.
Yahoo Sports asked him about a comment his trainer Jonathon Banks made to Ring magazine about the brutal fight. name did not come up in the conversation.
“Jonathon can promote things better than many promoters, including Eddie Hahn,” he said.
Going into the fight as the unified middleweight champion, Golovkin needs to win on Saturday or he’ll be bottom. Oh, he can still fight, but he doesn’t have much of a really important fight awaiting him if he loses to Alvarez again.
He is now 40 and has been at or nearing the pinnacle of his sport for over a decade. His two fights with Alvarez have sold a combined 2.4 million pay-per-views in the US on HBO Sports, and combined he’s earned more than $51 million at the gate. They were his third and his fourth tallest boxing gates in Nevada history.
As they say, Saturday’s game isn’t sold out yet and there are still plenty of good seats left. Performance is also expected to fall short.
It is not clear why. Golovkin was asked if fighting in such an oppressive atmosphere with the world watching in his first two matches against Alvarez helped him compete better under pressure. rice field. He turned it into his shot on DAZN. It makes me wonder where his head is heading towards the trilogy.
“As a big boxing fan, I really hope this fight will be an opportunity to bring boxing back to its highest level,” Golovkin said. [two] The fight took place at HBO, a different time with a different approach, and when HBO decided not to continue supporting it, a new company emerged with a different vision.
“They made a lot of mistakes, but I hope this fight will be an opportunity to bring boxing back to the heights it deserves.”
Their first 24 rounds together were their best boxing rounds in two years.
Alvarez, of course, has a little more urgency as he lost his light heavyweight title match to Dmitry Bivol.
However, Golovkin is the player who has to fight the most to win and who gets the most out of it. Judges in his first two games kept him from coming close to all-time great status and may have changed the course of his career, but he can’t change that now.
Golovkin needs a once-in-a-lifetime performance to remind people of the monster he once was.
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