Saturday night’s middleweight fight between Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin perhaps exceeded expectations. The showdown pitting two of the sport’s top pound-for-pound fighters, the undefeated 35-year-old fighter from Kazakhstan known as Triple-G, and the man who is now, after Floyd Mayweather’s latest retirement, boxing’s top name, went the distance—12 rounds of brawling and real boxing skill. There’s little doubt a rematch would have been scheduled even had the bout not ended in a controversial draw due to an even more controversial judge’s card that had Canelo as the decisive winner. The reality is that Golovkin earned the win.
Boxing great Roy Jones Jr. agreed with HBO’s other commentators that the big difference was Golovkin’s jab, an unusually powerful weapon that sent previous opponents to the canvas (see here, at about 2:10). Early in the fight, Golovkin landed several sharp jabs that clearly got Alvarez’s attention but failed to bully the Mexican backward. It seemed to confirm the opinions of some boxing experts I spoke with before the fight who predicted that Golovkin would have trouble with Alvarez, a fighter who wouldn’t let the undefeated Kazakh press forward all the time. In fact, Alvarez might turn it around and march on his opponent. Could Triple-G fight moving backward?
As it turned out, Alvarez didn’t stop Golovkin from moving forward. By the third round, Golovkin got a read on his opponent, his confidence surged and he moved in to back Alvarez into the ropes. After Golovkin scored on a vicious combination, Alvarez shook his head as if to say, nope, didn’t feel it. Typically, that kind of gesture—that’s all you got, really?—is a tell suggesting that the flurry did indeed rattle the besieged fighter. But in this case it seems to have described reality—Alvarez absorbed Golovkin’s punishment without too much difficulty, and he did it all night long.
It was the same for GGG. Canelo landed hard rights and hooks to his opponent’s head and Golovkin shook them off and kept coming forward. Nothing slowed him down. In other words, both fighters showed they have great chins. What’s even more significant than the ability to take blows that would likely deck other fighters is the will power it takes to keep throwing punches when you understand that your best shots, likely to fell other men, don’t have the desired effect. Seeing another man keep coming despite your best efforts saps the will of most prizefighters—but not the champions, which is what it means when great fighters go to war, targeting not only the other guy physically, but also mentally and even spiritually. Who is going to break? This man, both Canelo and GGG were no doubt telling themselves, is the real thing—a real warrior.
For me the big question is, what was going in the middle rounds when Golovkin consistently cut off the ring and backed Canelo into the ropes? Presumably, Alvarez’s plan was to make Golovkin tire. In his previous fight, a unanimous decision against Daniel Jacobs in March, Golovkin went the 12-round distance for the first time in his career. Maybe Canelo figured that the 35-year-old Golovkin was slowing down, so he’d let him use up his power banging him up against the ropes, and then he’d turn the tables.
Alvarez’s assessment was not entirely incorrect. Countless times Golovkin had him on the ropes, but then let Alvarez slip out to his left and reset. Canelo was correct to be worried about Golovkin’s left hand, especially his hooks to the body, responsible for several of his knockouts. But where was GGG’s right hand to the body to pin him in? Trainer Abel Sanchez advised him to have a right waiting for Alvarez when he escaped to the left—a move Golovkin has used to powerful effect in the past (see here at the 4:20 mark)—but it was never there. Perhaps, as HBO’s Jim Lampley speculated, Golovkin was concerned that a shot to the body would leave him open to counters at his own head. But as Roy Jones Jr. noted, Alvarez was already countering no matter what Golovkin threw.
Nonetheless, because Golovkin was clearly the aggressor from the third round on, and neither fighter had hurt the other, I had GGG ahead by at least 4 rounds going into the 12th. I think Canelo had Golovkin leading, too, or I suspect he would have come out for the last round much more circumspect. Sure, maybe Alvarez figured it was close and didn’t want to leave any room for doubt, but he fought like a man who thought he needed at least a knockdown to win the fight. Indeed, Canelo won the last round, but not the fight.
According to CompuBox punch statistics, Golovkin landed 218 of 703 shots (at 31 percent), and Alvarez landed 169 of 505 (34 percent). The three ring judges scored it a draw. Dave Moretti had the fight 115-113 in favor of Golovkin; Don Trella scored the fight 114-114, and then Adalaide Byrd had it 118-110 for Alvarez. The Las Vegas crowd was volubly displeased with the scoring, especially Byrd’s. It seemed like the whole thing was cooked to set up a rematch, needlessly since there’s little chance the same people who paid HBO $80 to watch two great middleweights go 12 rounds wouldn’t gladly do so again. The fighters want a sequel as well.
“Of course, I want the rematch,” said Golovkin. “This was a real fight.” Canelo concurred. “Yes, of course,” said the Mexican. “Obviously, yes. If the people want it, yes. He didn’t win. It was a draw. I always said I was going to be a step ahead of him. We’ll fight in the second one, but I’ll win.”
Former champ Oscar De La Hoya, whose Golden Boy Promotions represents Alvarez, thought his guy won, but agreed that the Byrd card was bizarre. “A lot of people are not understanding 118-110, just like myself,” he said after the fight. Byrd’s been at the center of controversy previously, when one promoter tried to get her removed from judging a fight, after several questionable scorecards. Still, the noise over her card has obscured the less, but still, controversial card scoring it a 114-114 draw.
“Corruption,” trainer and boxing analyst Teddy Atlas told ESPN. After uttering a few well-worn platitudes about how boxing has no oversight commission to separate church and state—promoters and officials—Atlas went on a tear. His interlocutor was ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, who contended that there’s nothing wrong with boxing—what scarred a really terrific fight was simply one incompetent judge.
Atlas wouldn’t have it. It’s not incompetence, he argued, it’s systemic.
Life’s not fair, said Smith.
Atlas conceded the point. But the thing that makes boxing a great sport, said Atlas, the greatest sport, is that on any given night a kid who has put everything into it, he can have his hand raised and be called champion of the world, and make life fair.
I was reminded of Fran Lebowitz’s old complaint to the effect that she’s tired of hearing how men like sports because it makes things clear, it’s simple because there are winners and losers. She’s right that life is complicated, that there are lots of gray areas. But it seems to me that Teddy Atlas won that argument last night. His problem with boxing is of course with the people who administer the sport, not the boxers themselves. The problem with boxing, he said, is that it “doesn’t honor things that should be honored.”
It’s not just about boxing then. The issue is, how do you get people to do hard things, if you do not honor those things? What is honor if for all its hard work it stands no chance against corruption?
