A year later, Golovkin, Alvarez fight again with bad intentions
LAS VEGAS — Canelo Alvarez has gone to bed the last few months thinking about how he’s going to knock out Gennady Golovkin in their middleweight title rematch.
To wake up Sunday morning as the 160-pound champion, though, he’ll have to take some chances he didn’t in his first fight with Golovkin a year ago. And that could be a real problem against a fearsome puncher who has knocked out 34 fighters in his 39 professional fights.
“I know it’s going to be a tough fight,” Alvarez said. “But I’m going in there to knock him out.”
Alvarez and Golovkin get another chance to settle what they couldn’t last September when they meet in a rematch of their first fight, which ended in a draw. They do so Saturday night on the Las Vegas Strip not as the gentleman fighters they portrayed themselves to be then, but as bitter rivals who legitimately seem to dislike each other.
That showed at Friday’s weigh-in, when the two fighters had to be separated in their only face-toface appearance before the fight. Golovkin weighed 159.6 pounds and Alvarez weighed 159.4.
A positive test by Alvarez for clenbuterol forced the rematch to be postponed from May. At the same time it produced some hard feelings between the two fighters over Alvarez’s contention that it was caused by eating contaminated meat in his native Mexico.
Whether that translates into a more entertaining fight remains to be seen. But both fighters seem determined not to let it be decided by the ringside judges.
“It’s a real fight,” Golovkin said this week. “Like a real war.”
Golovkin (38-0-1, 34 knockouts) is a slight favorite in the rematch, much as he was in the first fight. Many at ringside thought he won that bout, but Alvarez pulled off a draw by winning the late rounds as the 36-year-old Golovkin seemed to fade.
The fight wasn’t the “big drama show” that Triple G likes to talk about, with neither fighter down and neither fighter really hurt. But it was a tough, competitive matchup that delivered in other ways even without a winner at the end.
“I had a great experience from the first fight,” Golovkin said. “It’s a little bit different this time, but I believe it will be a big fight for the fans.”
Alvarez (49-1-2, 34 knockouts) believes that, too, but sees a different result. It’s one he’s envisioned nightly in bed as he goes over scenarios that will help him win.
“Every night in my bed before I go to sleep I visualize what I need to do to get the knockout,” Alvarez said through an interpreter. “I know it’s going to be a tough fight.”
HOUSTON — In a stretch where the Arizona Diamondbacks feel like things haven’t been going their way, a lucky break on Friday night helped them to a much-needed win.
Pinch-hitter Jon Jay’s tiebreaking triple in the eighth inning sent them past the Houston Astros 4-2, tightening a pair of playoff races.
The AL West-leading Astros had their edge cut by Oakland to 2 ½ games. Arizona moved within three games of St. Louis and Los Angeles for the second NL wild-card spot.
It was 2-all when Nick Ahmed doubled off Hector Rondon (2-4) with one out in the Arizona eighth. Jay hit a two-out, tiebreaking drive into the right field corner and later scored when a flyball by A.J. Pollock dropped in shallow center field for a single.
The triple by Jay came on a ball he said hit twice off his bat and that he thought was probably going to be foul.
“It kind of hooked back and that’s when I realized what had happened and I just ran,” Jay said. “It fell through and ... that was a big break for us right there. We needed it.”
Manager Torey Lovullo was impressed with the way his team persevered.
“I know that we’ve been dealing with some frustrating circumstances,” he said. “For us to come out against the world champs and play the way we did, I was really proud of these guys.”
Arizona starter Robbie Ray yielded two hits and two runs with six strikeouts in 5 1/3 innings. Brad Ziegler (2-6) pitched 1 1/3 scoreless innings and Yoshihisa Hirano allowed one hit in a scoreless ninth for his second save.
David Peralta had three hits and drove in two runs and Paul Goldschmidt doubled twice for Arizona.
Astros starter Dallas Keuchel allowed five hits and two runs in six innings.