A risk with his legacy
Alvarez lays it all on line for Golovkin
LAS VEGAS — Canelo Alvarez knows he asked for this. Whatever happens tomorrow night, hand raised or crestfallen, he made the choice. The choice to risk his legacy.
When the former junior middleweight titleholder challenges undisputed, undefeated middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin at TMobile Are- na, he will understand what the world does not. He will understand this is not a fight for money, even though he will make the most money in his career the moment the first bell rings. No, this is a fight for glory.
The money fights came long ago, back when he was a 15-year-old high school dropout making his pro debut inside a dank Mexican arena in Tonala for 800 pesos. It was so even four years back, when he challenged Floyd Mayweather Jr. knowing he was not yet ready to decipher the best pound-for-pound boxer on the planet, but because of the size of the payday knew too that he could take the risk without suffering lasting consequences.
Those were fights for money, but this one — the one that has guaranteed him $15 million and could pay him double that if the payper-view goes as expected and over a million people hit the “BUY” button on their remotes — is to pronounce who he is.
“This fight is personal for me,” Alvarez said this week. “It is an answer to all the people who were sure it would never happen, the ones who thought I was ducking him. I expect this to be an ugly, vicious fight. The styles ensure that it must be. He will come at me. I do not run. That’s how I want to box and that’s the way he fights.
“I have a past before this and a future after it. All the talk is words lost in the wind. But this, this is for the people who said this fight wasn’t going to happen, for the people who said I’m going to get knocked out. For those people, well, they will find out on Saturday night who I am.
“They look at him and all those knockouts (37-0, 33 KOs, including a streak of 23 straight that was broken by Danny Jacobs in March when Golovkin won a disputed decision). They should look at the opponents. He came at them and they covered up. They were afraid to take risks. This fight is about risk taking. You cannot win against him without taking risks. I will take them.”
He will take them because it is what he has trained to do all his life. Since his brother Rigoberto first handed him a pair of boxing gloves at the age of 10 in front of their cramped house in Guadalajara and began to train him on a patch of dust and grass out front, Canelo Alvarez has believed a moment like this would come.
Three years later, Rigoberto would walk a few blocks with him to meet two men who would mold him into a champion, trainers Jose “Chepo” Reynoso and his son Eddy. Alvarez says now “that is when I started to dream.” The same could be said of the Reynosos.
Young boys walk into gyms in poor parts of cities and towns all over the world every week. Most come with a dream, leave with a bloody nose and don’t come back. Only the different ones come back. The ones with a fighter’s spirit and an anger deep inside.
Canelo Alvarez was one of them, for what his new trainers noticed first was that he had a gift no one but God can give. He had fast hands and an assassin’s eyes.
“He was different than the others,” Chepo Reynoso says 14 years later, only days before the biggest fight of all their lives. “This is the culmination of 14 years of work. To show that Canelo is No.1 in the world. That is what a win over Golovkin would mean.”
What it would mean is more than riches, for riches come and go. In boxing, more often the latter happens than the former. Prize fighters fight for money, and for many of them that is the only prize. But for a few, like Alvarez and Golovkin, they fight for something that will last longer than pesos or dollars do. They fight for history.
“I want to be a legend,” Alvarez said this week. “Yes, there is the money, but before the money, the first thing — the thing above all — is my passion for boxing. This is a true 50-50 fight. So I’m risking it, but so is he.”
They are two men risking their place in the sport — not only their place atop the middleweight division but their place in history. For the loser, as for the winner, there will be the biggest payday of his career — but for the winner there is also validation. It is something Canelo Alvarez has been fighting for since he first slipped those 800 pesos into his pocket.
“I’m doing something that I asked for,” Alvarez (49-1-1, 34 KO) said of facing middleweight boxing’s most imposing puncher. “I’ve always pictured myself, or imagined myself, being one of the best fighters and being in big fights, but I could never have imagined the magnitude that it’s gotten to.
“I always wanted this. I’ve always wanted the biggest challenges. It’s no real pressure. I’m ready for it. Whatever it’s going to take to win and to make it memorable, that’s what I’m going to do. They’ve been saying it’s obviously the two best fighters in the world fighting each other. I would agree. I think the winner should be recognized as the best fighter in the world.”
That is the prize Canelo Alvarez seeks tomorrow night. It is why he asked for this moment, one in which he is a 2-1 underdog. Despite the support of the crowd and an impressive résumé, the wiseguys doubt Alvarez. It is a doubt he does not share.
“We’re both going to fight a fight where anybody can win by knockout,” Alvarez said. “We both have the power to win by knockout. That’s what makes for a great fight.
“Obviously, anything can happen in boxing. Anything can happen at any point, at any time. More so when both fighters can punch. Without a doubt this can be one of the great fights in history. I’m going to do my part to make it memorable, so I can go down in history as one of the best fighters in history. Can it be the best? The ingredients are there.”
The ingredients are there, and tomorrow night Canelo Alvarez will be there too. Right where he wants to be: In the eye of the storm, calm but ready for the thunder to come.