Gennady Golovkin started the trash talk against Canelo Alvarez ahead of their upcoming fight by saying Canelo should’ve knocked out Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.
The whole boxing world has September 16 circled on their calendar, since that’s the date for the marquee matchup between Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin. After much speculation, the T-Mobile Arena was set as the venue — because putting it in the fight capital of the world will only add further intrigue to this bout.
Another way to add intrigue is to have the two fighters start talking trash. That may be difficult since there’s a language barrier between the two, although Canelo did speak perfect English when he promoted the fight.
GGG famously set the stage for that in-ring promotion by sitting ringside for Alvarez’s last fight against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. Alvarez shut out Chavez 12 rounds to nothing en route to a seventh straight victory. Everyone agreed it was a dominating performance, but when talking to TMZ in a lengthy interview, GGG said he was not impressed (Chavez question starts at the 1:38 mark):
He said that Alvarez looked terrible in that fight and believes Canelo should’ve knocked Chavez out. He also wasn’t a fan of Alvarez standing up in between rounds, which he did to straight up disrespect his opponent, saying he only did that to impress the girls.
GGG’s greatest attribute is his devastating knockout power — he has one less knockout than Canelo in 14 fewer fights. But to say that Canelo was terrible against Chavez Jr. is simply not true. The fight wasn’t exciting, but that doesn’t make it a bad performance. If you shut someone out over 12 rounds, you’re clearly doing something right. Besides, GGG shouldn’t be one to talk, considering he just got past Daniel Jacobs in a razor-thin decision.
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If anything, Canelo proved that he had the conditioning to go the full 12 rounds. That’s important for a fight of this magnitude, and people will question whether a fighter that hardly ever goes past the eighth round can do the same. Golovkin is the rightful favorite in this fight, but in the sport of boxing, anything can happen. The Big Drama Show should be wary of getting overconfident against an opponent that’s arguably his equal.