LAS VEGAS – The business wanted a party. Wanted to celebrate. But all it can do today is to try to explain away another controversy, the only promise boxing ever seems to deliver with any kind of reliability.
GGG might as well stand for Grumble Grumble Grumble.
The judges got in the way of a good fight. Not a great one. Gennady Golovkin and Canelo Alvarez will never be confused with Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns. But they’re in the history books anyway, but for all the wrong reasons. They fought to a draw Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena in another pay-per-outrage event.
Canelo promoter Oscar De La Hoya promised rounds of hell. For him, the hell will come in trying to calm the anger over the judging. For instance: What in the hell was Adelaide Byrd watching? She had it 118-110 for Canelo. Carl Moretti scored it 115-113 from Golovkin. Don Trella had it 114-114.
At home and in the very expensive seats, it looked like a much different fight. On the 15 Rounds scorecard, it was GGG, 116-112. Perhaps, it was closer than that. But Golovkin seemed to gain momentum midway through the bout, controlling the pace and landing most of the punches from the sixth through the 11th rounds. According to CompuBox, Golovkin (37-0-1, 33 KOs) landed 49 more punches, 218 to Canelo’s 169.
On any scorecard, Golovkin, still the reigning middleweight champ, also appeared to score heavily in the aggression category. That’s GGG for Going Going Going. He was always going forward. Canelo (48-1-2, 34 KOs) would land thudding body shots and head-rocking uppercuts. Yet after each, the redheaded Mexican looked up and there he was all over again, Golovkin going, going, going forward.
Canelo will see GGG coming forward and into his face in his dreams. He’ll also hear the boos. The predominantly Mexican crowd — populated by Canelo fans — was unhappy at the judging. After all, they had been told this was a real fight. Whet they didn’t know was that the judging would be such a mockery of what Canelo and GGG did. Those punches were real. They were dangerous. The judging was devoid of reality, yet dangerous in terms of how it can further erode credibility in a sport with so little of it.
A rematch, of course, looks to be inevitable.
“Of course, I want a rematch,’’ Golovkin said. “I won the fight.’’
But not the cards, a House of Cards that always seems to make boxing look like a Joker.
Joseph Diaz faced the unknown, or at least the unexpected.He approached it with caution. He emerged from it with the win he had to have.
He had trained to fight Jorge Lara. Lara withdrew with an injury and he wound up beating Rafael Rivera for a mandatory shot at the WBC featherweight title Saturday night in the last fight before Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin entered the ring at T-Mobile Arena.
“I feel like I had a good performance overall,” said Diaz (25-0, 14 KOs), an El Monte, Calif., fighter who won 119-109, 120,108, 119-109 decision over Rivera (251-2, 16 KOs). “I was able to put pressure and dictate the pace of the fight, and be able to enter into a lot of exchanges. Rivera is strong, has good body shots, and had good speed. I think we gave them a good show.”
The arena was empty. But the ring wasn’t.
Flyweight Marlen Esperza was there, full of heart and skill, to open the show Saturday a couple of hours before the pay-per-view telecast of the long-awaited card featuring the middleweight showdown between Gennady Golvkin and Canelo Alvarez at T-Mobile Arena,
Esperza (3-0) who dedicated the fight to the flood-ravaged victims in her hometown of Houston, looked dominated every second of every round for a six-round shutout of Aracely Palacios (8-8, 1 KO) of Mexico.
“Even though my opponent, on paper, looked like she had more ring experience, I’ve been in the ring way more than she had,’’ said Esparza, a 2012 Olympic bronze medalist. “Because I had three-minute rounds, I was able to think a lot more in the ring and was even told by my trainer I had to slow down.
“I couldn’t research much about my opponent, but we knew she was going to be throwing her right often. I’m satisfied with my performance because this was my first six-round fight.”
