It doesn’t look as though world middleweight ruler Gennady Golovkin will go ahead with a planned June fight, and will instead rest up and focus fully on the still hoped for superfight with Canelo Alvarez this September. According to “multiple sources” who spoke with Yahoo! Sports, GGG will skip the June fight.
WBO middleweight champ Billy Joe Saunders, who was all set to travel over to Golovkin’s home country of Kazakhstan for the June fight, said all along that he would not wait indefinitely, that he would move on to another fight if Triple-G didn’t sign the contract ASAP. Now it seems BJS will indeed move on (and not be too happy about it; losing out as he has on such a massive opportunity and payday).
According to Abel Sanchez, trainer of course of Golovkin, his fighter was “sore” after the tougher than expected 12-rounder with Danny Jacobs last month.
“He was sore. He had a 12 round fight,” Sanchez said. “I didn’t see it in the first day in the dressing room. Usually the second or third day you start to feel it and I didn’t check in with him right after. After a long training camp, I’m the last person he would want to see. He is not a complainer. It’s just natural soreness. It was a difficult fight.”
Difficult enough for Canelo to decide that he can topple GGG in September? Fans are hoping this fight, talked about for a couple of years now, will indeed go ahead as promised. Negotiations are still ongoing, but of course, Canelo must first get past a fully focused and already in shape Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. We will know a lot more after the May 6 showdown, and in the meantime, GGG will recharge his batteries and no doubt get his mind fully on the Mexican star.
At age 35, maybe three world title fights a year is too punishing a schedule for the middleweight king. Still, it seems things would have been a whole lot different if GGG had KO’d Jacobs quickly, as a number of people thought would be the case.
Is GGG a fading fighter? Does Canelo, around a decade the younger man, go one better than Jacobs and actually defeat Golovkin? Right now, the pencilled in September megafight has the look of a genuine 50/50 match-up.