Abel Sanchez, the trainer for Gennady Golovkin (38-1-1, 34 KOs), was not surprised with cement chin of Mexican superstar Saul "Canelo" Alvarez.
Last Saturday night, Canelo and Golovkin took part in a middleweight classic where they waged war for twelve rounds at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
When the scores were tallied up, Canelo (50-1-2, 34 KOs) walked away with a majority decision, and Golovkin's WBC, WBA world titles. One judge had it a 114-114 draw, while two others saw Canelo as the winner with cards of 115-113.
Sanchez was a huge critics of Canelo's fight strategy in the first contest, which ended in a controversial twelve round split draw in September 2017.
But he was very impressed with how the second fight played out.
"I think that we got the fight that we were all hoping we would get. We got a real classic between two of the best fighters in the middleweight division. I think they are separated by one round in the first fight and one round in this fight," Sanchez told On The Ropes Boxing Radio.
"The twelfth round was a pivotal round in this fight and two of the judges had it for Canelo. There’s a lot of dispute about what people think but the bottom line is, the three competent judges had Canelo winning by one round, and we have to accept the fact that that’s the decision."
One of more interesting factors in the fight, was Canelo's ability to withstand Golovkin's best punches.
GGG is one of the most feared punchers in the weight class and in most fights he either drops his opponents or blasts them out - but Canelo ate his best shots and kept coming.
Sanchez is not surprised with Canelo's ability to take GGG's punch
"No [I'm not surprised], I knew that he would hold up. I’ve seen him train, I’ve seen him fight before, I’ve had him in the gym with us before, so I know that he’s an exceptional fighter. I hope that that would have happened earlier in the fight so that we could have had more time to hurt him," Sanchez said.
"These two guys left their hearts in the ring at the end of twelve rounds. I’m sure the things they said to each other after the fight will never be known but I’m sure they were of mutual respect and admiration for what they had just done."