GOLOVKIN vs CANELO
CONTROVERSY + PSYCHOLOGY + STRENGTHS + WEAKNESSES + PREDICTION
THE psychological issues involved are fascinating. Those likely to have the greatest influence surround each fighter’s response to those 12 rounds between them last year, and the fallout to Canelo Alvarez’s positive test for clenbuterol.
The latter largely depends whether he was caught having been deliberately doping for some time, or whether it was, as he says, a consequence of eating contaminated meat.
I sense Gennady Golovkin is regardless absolutely convinced that Alvarez is a serial doper, and if Alvarez was knowingly cheating, guilt and embarrassment are among the draining, negative emotions he could feel and which can affect preparations and therefore performance. If the assumption is that he’s now clean, he may also have less confidence through knowing he’s now fighting without its potential benefits, and certainly feel he’s got to show greater physical strength and go toe-to-toe with Golovkin; over-compensating against that big a puncher to show it was all a mistake. He’ll want to push that he’s never knowingly taken performanceenhancing drugs.
There’s therefore a potential impact on both training and fight night itself. The worst scenario for him is that his team are training him to be mobile, but internally he’s thinking ‘I’ve got to knock Golovkin out’, because there’s a conflict between what you’re training for and actually trying to do. Equally, if Alvarez wasn’t knowingly cheating then his confidence will have grown through proving he can compete physically during their first fight. He will also have had some minor doubts before that, which will since have gone.
Either way, Alvarez will have been affected by suggestions he’s a cheat. If he’s innocent, he’ll be incredibly angry and hurt; if he’s guilty, then maintaining this lie is really tough. Lying, throughout, in front of the world’s press in the year’s biggest fight amid that number of questions, is a really uncomfortable position, even if it becomes easier for an athlete with each time that they cheat – some gradually convince themselves they’re the ones solely responsible for the results, not the relevant substances.
The first fight was close, so both fighters will have emerged from that convinced that they won. Sometimes a fighter will watch a fight back – having claimed that they did enough to win – and then conclude that they hadn’t, but not here.
Golovkin believing he won without getting the decision eliminates any possibility of complacency on his part, when he’s already clearly very diligent, and this time he’ll want the stoppage to take it out of the judges’ hands. Even without the potential morals involving PEDS he’d be even more motivated this time around – to prove that he won the first fight, because of that sense of injustice, because he considers himself an ambassador for the sport which can act as a higher calling, and partly because he’ll believe Alvarez will be training even harder. Even if he considers Alvarez clean this time, it’s ‘He’s now having to train even harder to get the benefits doping would have given him’. His and Abel Sanchez’s attempts to goad Alvarez into trading with him are not only because that’s exactly what they want him to do, but perhaps born of a concern he may be even more mobile, in the absence of any muscle mass clenbuterol can encourage.
Golovkin’s very calm, controlled, and doesn’t get overhyped or distracted by external influences, the crowd, or the event. There’s also this perception that at 36 he is getting old, but even if Alvarez can use that positively, Golovkin will just be driven by it.
Alvarez and Golovkin are both extraordinarily mentally tough – that’s partly what makes them the elite fighters they are – and to the extent that while all of this will have affected their preparations, they’re capable of blocking almost all of it out entirely once they climb into the ring, even if what was once a mutual respect has become a mutual dislike.