Fight fans had a pretty great weekend of action fights this past weekend – with welterweights Shawn Porter, Danny Garcia, Amir Khan and Samuel Vargas all fighting their hearts out – but this Saturday night promises to be positively huge. It’s the big one, the rematch, the bad blood fight of 2018: it’s Gennady Golovkin-Canelo Alvarez II.
As all fans know, plenty has happened since that exciting night in Las Vegas a full year ago: Canelo’s two failed drugs tests and his career-longest layoff coming as a result, the nasty words the two fighters and members of their respective teams have fired off, the sheer tension that has built and built between the two middleweight rivals. Now, another debatable decision handed in by the three scoring judges aside, EVERYTHING will be settled in Vegas in just over five full days time.
Who wins the return fight?
Canelo, as in the first fight, holds the advantage of youth, being almost a decade the younger man. Golovkin, as in the first fight, is the far more proven 160 pounder. Most felt GGG won fight-one yet no-one is sure who wins the sequel. Will age catch up with Golovkin? How will that long and frustrating year-long inactive spell affect the Mexican star?
For his part, Canelo, in speaking with The Las Vegas Review-Journal, said he has no real concerns over the 12-month layoff affecting him on Saturday but that he is not really sure, simply because he has never been inactive that long in his pro career before.
“I don’t know if it will be different because it’s never happened to me,” Canelo said. “I’ve never been inactive this long. The most was nine months and it didn’t bother me because I’m always training, exercising and sparring.”
Canelo did use some of his out of the ring time to useful effect, as he had a cyst removed from his knee after the first fight with GGG. Canelo does look to be in absolutely fantastic physical shape, while we know his mental motivation is enormous – Canelo is truly desperate to win, and in doing so, he hopes, clear his name. But GGG is also looking superb in the gym and he has his own big motivation to win this time around.
Both men want, desperately, to end all doubt by scoring a decisive KO victory. It’s possible we will see one, but another hard, gruelling and engrossing 12-round battle looks more likely. Both men insist they are more than ready for it.