Although he is yet to be defeated, Gennady Golovkin suffered his first draw of his professional boxing career when he squared off against Canelo Alvarez in the middle of the ring at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on September 24.
The middleweight fight for the WBA (Super), WBC, IBF, IBO, The Ring and vacant lineal middleweight titles ended in a split decision after 12 rounds of boxing, with many believing the fight could have gone either way.
It was the first time Triple G had not won a fight in his professional career, so it was unusual territory for the Kazakhstani. A rematch is expected to be set up between the two fighters at some point in 2018 to decide once and for all who is the better boxer.
Alvarez showed in GGG’s last fight that he is a beatable boxer, he was just unable to get over the final hurdle in order to achieve the win.
WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders believes he has a strategy that can be used in order to defeat Golovkin (from 2:20 in the video below).
The British boxer said, according to Fight Hype: “To beat Golovkin, you can’t go in there thinking you’re going to knock him out. You can’t go for the stoppage because you have to go in there with a mindset that you’re going to make this man chase you, hit him with two or three punches, then slide away.
Saunders went on to say that this would be very hard for any boxer to do, and he also surprisingly praised Triple G for being one of the ‘true greats’ of the sport of boxing.
In the GGG vs Canelo fight, Golovkin out punched Alvarez in 10 of the 12 rounds. The Kazakhstani threw more punches, landing 218 of 703 punches thrown (31%), while ?lvarez was more accurate, as he managed to land 169 of his 505 punches thrown (34%).
Maybe Saunders’ strat would, therefore, work, as it would be GGG is landing even less punches, but we don’t really know for sure unless a boxer implements this strat in a fight against him from the start.
A rematch between Golovkin and Alvarez is expected to take place at some point in 2018, while Saunders, on the other hand, is still undefeated himself with a 25-0 record. He will be defending the WBO middleweight title on December 16 against Canadian David Lemieux in Quebec, Canada.
