The Boxing world has been forcefully sucked into the black hole of the Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor fight for the better part of a year, with the media and casual fans unable to focus on anything beyond the circus which delivered record PPV buys. But Gennady Golovkin vs. Canelo Alvarez is boxing perfected. It’s the real fight that all combat fans have been looking for — two men as close to their prime as scheduling allows, fighting for supremacy of the boxing world. GGG is 37-0 with 33 knockouts. Alvarez is 49-1-1 with 34 knockouts. They seem allergic to boring fights, and refreshingly, unlike McGregor and Mayweather, they seem to avoid microphones like the strikes of their opponents.
This fight for the undisputed title of middleweight king, and quite possibly the title of the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world, and yet, there’s very little to be said. The never-ending highlight reels of both men do the talking, and if need be, Gennady or Canelo will give a few quiet remarks, then continue training. They embody a truth that knows that the only statement which truly matters is made with 10-ounce gloves in Las Vegas on September 16th.
Gennady Golovkin was brought from relative European obscurity in 2012 by signing with K2 promotions, who brought him under the wing of trainer Abel Sanchez who developed his Euro knockout style into an aggressive, pursuing, Mexican style. For Sanchez, this was how you marketed a fighter and put butts in the seats, not by making incendiary remarks and threatening to throw chairs at press conferences.
“It was very important that he understood that I’m a fan, so I want to develop something that I would be proud to showcase, but then would be happy to pay for it to be seen or to see it on TV,” Sanchez told Uproxx, aware of the difficulties the popularity of boxing has faced over the last few years. Boxing has been secondary to casual fight fans to the regularly-scheduled UFC events that seem to be on every weekend. It feels like boxing is asking a lot of casuals when it comes to keeping track of the various weight divisions, and fights that are meant to be showcased slaughters of lesser opponents. But there have also been quite a few classics in just the last calendar year.
“This year has been great for boxing,” Sanchez explained. “Joshua-Klitschko is probably one of the better fights we’ve seen in a long, long time.” But it still was a blip on the radar of US-based fight fans, even with one of the best heavyweights ever being taken off his throne.
“Andre Ward fought a rematch with Sergey Kovalev, two of probably the best fighters in the world, and they sell 5,500 tickets at Mandalay Bay and sell $125,000 in seats. That’s sad. That’s sad because they’re two of the best fighters in the world, but nobody wants to see them.” And yet GGG and Canelo have enraptured the combat sports zeitgeist as the fight. The purest that can be made. In a combat sports world that’s being marketed more and more like pro wrestling, GGG-Canelo is tracking to be a huge success. In large part, to the danger these two men present in the ring.
Sanchez sees history in this fight that’s impossible to deny. “These two guys have the kind of styles that they’re going to go at each other and they’re going to fight, just like back in the mid-80s, when the four, the five kings were around, Sugar Ray Leonard, Hagler, Duran, Hearns, Benitez. All those guys, they gave us fights that we still talk about today.”
And that fighting style is the “Mexican style” which Sanchez has instilled in GGG. His pursuing and decimation of his competition has become legendary over the last half-decade, and Golovkin co-opting that style to elevate his career is a subtext likely not lost on Oscar de la Hoya’s fighter. Sanchez believes this will only make the fight more vicious.
“Canelo’s got a lot of pressure on him because he’s Mexican, because Mexican’s expect their fighters, their warriors to fight in a certain style and a certain way, so he’s got this pressure. That makes it more of a for-sure that it’s going to be an explosive fight in the middle of the ring, where they’re going to go at each other because Mexicans want to see that. I think he’s got a lot of responsibility to his base to put on that kind of fight. It can’t help but be a great fight.”
Ultimately, Golovkin vs. Canelo has it all. It’s a battle for the top of the mountain, the undisputed, unified middleweight titles, and a sense of pride after Canelo and his team avoided the fight with GGG for years. At 35 years old, Golovkin wants to prove he’s the absolute best, while Canelo wants to erase his only loss — the majority-decision he dropped to Floyd Mayweather four years ago. And most of all, these are two men that want to put the Mayweather-McGregor freakshow behind them. In the sport of boxing, they’re the main event now, and on September 16th, that fact will be etched in stone.
And if GGG-Canelo can live up to the hype that has been manifested almost purely by their fists and rock-solid chins, then a rematch or eventual trilogy could be the best thing for boxing and fans.
“We haven’t had those kinds of entertaining fights where there could be two or three fights, but I think that this fight, the styles and the records and what they’ve done in their past tell us that it’s going to be that kind of explosive dramatic fight in the center of the ring,” Sanchez said. “If it is, then we’re going to bring a lot of those fans back because they’re going to demand that we do it again.”
