Gennadiy Golovkin’s former trainer Abel Sanchez wasn’t pleased with what he saw from him in his 12 round unanimous decision loss to Canelo Alvarez last Saturday night.
Sanchez says it looked like Golovkin (42-2-1, 37 KOs) was fighting like it was a friendly sparring match, whereas Canelo was throwing with mean intentions.
The way that Golovkin fought, Sanchez says it looked like he was just trying to survive and not win the fight.
It’s unclear why Golovkin wouldn’t go all out, but we’ve seen that type of thing before from past Canelo opponents like Sergey Kovalev.
When he fought Canelo in 2019, it appeared that he was taking it easy on the Mexican star, and was just happy to be there, getting the massive payday. Golovkin had the same look to him last Saturday.
Gennadiy been trying to get this big payday fight from Canelo for the last four years, and when he finally did get the match, he seemed like he was going easy on him.
It was very strange because Golovkin didn’t fight the way earlier this year in his last fight against Ryota Murata in April.
“I was disappointed by the efforts. It looked like one guy wasn’t ready to fight, and the other guy was glad,” said Abel Sanchez to Fight Hub TV about last Saturday’s trilogy fight between Canelo Alvarez and Gennadiy Golovkin.
“It didn’t go as I thought it would go. I felt like Gennadiy’s first eight rounds were like hitting the mitts. It was like two friends sparring with one another.
“Canelo was throwing punches with bad intentions, and Gennadiy was not aggressive enough to try and win the fight. It seemed like at the beginning anyway, but not towards the end.
“It just seemed like he was happy to be there and not to try and win but to go 12 rounds and survive the 12 rounds. That’s not Gennadiy to me.
“That’s a good excuse, but I don’t buy it,” said Sanchez when told that Golovkin said that he made a “strategic” mistake by conserving his energy in the first nine rounds.
“If he was 30 years old or 20 years old, okay, I could see it because he has a long career ahead of him. He’s 40 years old; he fighting at a weight where he’s not putting his belts in danger; nobody has ever hurt him in a fight.
“You try to win by being aggressive. If you run out of gas, you run out of gas, but the other guy is going to run out of gas too. He’s in the same boat. Actually, I thought Canelo may have been breathing a little heavy towards the end of the fight.
“Imagine if Gennadiy had applied some pressure, then he really would have run out of gas. That’s a good excuse, but I don’t buy it. Since we parted, he’s tried to put on a different persona inside the ring, a different style, a different way of addressing every round.
“When we were together, we addressed every round. It wasn’t a fight. It wasn’t 12 rounds, and it wasn’t what was going to happen in the end. I wanted to win every round and do whatever we could to win every round.
“It seemed like he was reacting to what Canelo was doing, and that wasn’t the Gennadiy that I knew. If he doesn’t want to do it, it doesn’t matter what we say in the corner.
“Johnathon was trying to urge him, but you can only do in a fight what you did in the gym. It’s not going to change his mind because he’s only intuned to what he wants to do,” said Sanchez.
