By: Sean Crose
“That loss kind of brought the situation back to reality,” Gennady Golovkin says in a New York Post interview, “back to the actual state of things.” The 40 year long time titlist is referring to arch rival Canelo Alvarez’ loss to Dmitry Bivol last May. “I’ve known Canelo for a long time,” he says, “and I’ve always known that it (a Canelo loss) was possible, and Dmitri Bivol just showed us that.” Although the enormously talented Canelo had recently been seen as invincible, Golovkin says he “never shared that opinion.”
That’s understandable considering many, if not most, feel Golovkin won at least one of his two fights against Canelo. True, Canelo may have walked out of those bouts with a draw and a win respectively, but a large swath of the public feel the red haired star was on the receiving end of judicial preference. According to Golovkin, however, he never let those rulings impact him. “I’ll be honest with you,” Golovkin says, “I moved on the next day. I haven’t thought about it much. I realized that those people who gave those scores, they were used. They were used like disposable tissues are being used. It was time to use them, they were used and disposed off.”
Perhaps surprisingly, Golovkin claims he’s not afraid of biased judging when he faces Canelo for the third time this September 8th in Las Vegas. Nor is he apparently afraid that he’s moving up in weight to face Canelo in the super middleweight division, where Canelo reigns supreme. Indeed, the Kazackh warrior feels like it will be Canelo who will be weighted down with concerns in their third match. “I think that he will draw conclusions as a result of his loss,” Golockin says. “He will take our fight much more seriously, much more realistically, and that will be a totally different fight, compared with his fight against Bivol.”
It’s pretty obvious to fans and analysts alike that neither Golovkin nor Canelo are big fans of each other. Indeed, the Post writes that, since the loss to Bivol and its subsequent fallout, “Alvarez’s public demeanor has noticeably changed and grown more combative.” While it’s also been argued that Golovkin has been subtly baiting Canelo this time around Golovkin claims Canelo’s manner indicates “the way he was probably brought up and the level of toxicity around him, toxic people that are in his camp.”
