THAT WAS A TOTAL TRAVESTY
Golovkin denied victory by calamitous judges but draw ensures rematch with Canelo
THE fight which should be forever remembered for ushering in a renaissance of oldfashioned guts and glory boxing was disfigured by a robbery in the desert in which infamous drugs cartel boss El Chapo would have taken sadistic delight.
The miscarriage of justice brought down by three judges also dishonoured the stupendous efforts of the world’s greatest middleweight and a Mexican idol who carried the flag on his country’s independence weekend with courage beyond the call of duty.
Gennady Golovkin and Canelo Alvarez deserve to be elevated to the pantheon of Leonard, Hagler, Hearns and Duran.
Instead, the great Golovkin went away describing the draw inflicted on his previously all-winning record as: ‘Terrible, unbelievable.’
He is a master not only of his brutal, noble art but of classic understatement. It was an obscenity.
Instead, the warrior Canelo’s reward for conspicuous gallantry was to be jeered and ridiculed by the thousands of Mexicans who had come to the T-Mobile Arena.
He made the mistake of trying to justify this decision in his favour to one of the most knowledgeable as well as passionate boxing audiences in the world.
Every time he spoke, the thousands who had crossed the Rio Grande to support his cause booed deafeningly and, at times, roared out loud at him with laughter. When it came Golovkin’s turn at the microphone, they cheered him to the reverberating rafters. Nothing Canelo nor anyone else might say could excuse the score of 118-110 scored for him by one Adalaide Byrd.
Not promoter Oscar De La Hoya, even though he did think his man won. So did Canelo. So what?
Not Bob Bennett, commissioner of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, who passed it off as ‘one of my best judges having a bad night.’ Make that catastrophic. This lady Byrd saw this epic fight in virtually direct contradiction of my 118-111 for Triple G. I am not alone in the view that Byrd should never be allowed to judge any fight again, let alone one of such magnitude and importance to this sport. As Canelo’s promoter Tom Loeffler rightly said: ‘Judging like this is unfair to the fighters and the fans.’
This is by no means the first cardinal Sin to be committed in this City.
Travesties like this have been perpetrated here, though not only on this deceptive Strip it must be said, with distressing frequency.
This one not only distracts from all the benefits such an epochal battle should be heaping on boxing at a time of impending resurgence, it does so by raising a public perception of the corruption which used to plague the hard old game.
Word that the betting odds on the draw had halved at the last minute from 30-1 to 15-1 caused cynical eyebrows to be raised in the casino sports books.
That brings scrutiny, also, on the scores registered by Don Trella — a 114-114 draw — and even Dave Moretti, whose 115-113 for Golovkin did less than justice to the iron man from Kazakhstan.
The saving graces for Golovkin are that the decision keeps his several world championship belts in his deserved possession and that a rematch at least as equally as enriching as this multi-million dollar extravaganza is inevitable. Of course both fighters said ‘yes please.’
Eat your heart out, Britain’s Billy Joe Saunders, who retained his WBO portion of the middleweight title on Saturday night against America’s Willie Monroe Jnr.
Of course we all want to watch it again, because it was indeed the special fight we hoped it would be.
Triple G carried it to Canelo with ruthless, relentless, pulverising venom.
Canelo kept shaking his head in defiance and hitting back, even as he was being hammered by the heaviest pound-for-pound puncher in the world.
The fight had its own hallmark round of incredible brutality towards the end. It came after referee Kenny Bayless had looked closely at stopping it in favour of Golovkin.
From somewhere deep in that fighting heart, Canelo found such strength and will to hurl himself back into the fray that he wobbled the champion.
I gave Alvarez only two rounds but in terms of bravery under fire he was a perfect ten, just as Golovkin was near flawless with regard to his precision punching power and judgement of distance.
That is what we all should have been talking about.
A curse on the house of judges.