Canelo Alvarez has predictably declined to activate his rematch clause for a second fight against Dmitry Bivol and will be facing Gennady Golovkin on September 17th.
Canelo, 31, says he already had a contract for the third fight with Golovkin, so he wants to stick with what he had initially planned. If Canelo decides to continue to delay the rematch with Bivol, who can blame him? Bivol has Canelo’s number.
That would be foolhardy for Canelo to trigger the rematch because he would be stumbling into another mismatch against the talented Bivol, who has boxing skills that the Mexican star can only dream about possessing. Bivol was another level to Canelo, and it had nothing to do with his size advantage.
The 31-year-old Bivol was simply the better-schooled fighter, and his cardio was on another level than Canelo.
“We already had that contract [with Gennadiy Golovkin], that agreement, so we have to continue what we started, and I think those are the two biggest fights in boxing, the fight with Golovkin and the rematch with Bivol,” said Canelo.
“Unfortunately, we lost, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try again.”
Maybe Canelo will try and avenge his loss to Bivol next year after he faces Golovkin and John Ryder in 2022. Unfortunately, you can’t predict whether Canelo will get past Golovkin because we could see him pull off an upset on September 17th.
Now that Bivol has shown how to defeat Canelo by bombing him with endless combinations, Golovkin must follow that cookie-cutter mold, and he could do the same.
“Let’s push ahead without going backward,” said Alvarez’s trainer Eddy Reynoso. “A Mexican never surrenders; let’s push forward.”
The “push forward” comment by Reynoso might be code for, ‘We move on when beaten.’ This is the second time Canelo has lost and moved on after getting beaten.
If he wanted to show the fans that he’s cut from a different cloth, he’d have triggered his rematch clause and would be fighting Bivol on September 17th instead of the 40-year-old Golovkin.
It doesn’t matter what excuses Canelo gives for his reasons not to fight Bivol again. The fans view it as a signal that he doesn’t want any of that smoke and would rather fight the aging Golovkin, who has looked terrible in two out of his last four fights.
Golovkin has really slowed down, and it doesn’t seem possible that he’s going to improve enough to win the trilogy fight with Canelo. He’s an easy mark for Canelo, similar to the fighters he fought from England last year.
