By Keith Idec
LAS VEGAS – Canelo Alvarez senses a lack of confidence from Gennady Golovkin and his trainer, Abel Sanchez.
If Golovkin and Sanchez were confident about beating him in their middleweight championship rematch Saturday night, Alvarez contends they wouldn’t be talking about hand-wraps, gloves, judges and various additional issues as their second bout draws near. Among other things, Alvarez assessed Golovkin’s psyche during an interview session with reporters Tuesday at MGM Grand after the middleweights made their “grand arrivals” at the host hotel for their HBO Pay-Per-View main event.
“I feel that they’re not confident,” Alvarez said through a translator. “It’s been a lot of excuses and a lot of requests – the barriers, the national anthem. They said it was gonna take too long. They talked about the judges, but they did leave the judge that scored him the victory. They did that. But it’s just been a bunch of excuses.”
Dave Moretti, the judge to whom Alvarez referred, scored their first fight for Golovkin, 115-113. Nevada’s Moretti is the only judge from their first fight who’ll return to ringside Saturday night to score their 12-round rematch (8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT; $84.99 in HD).
The Nevada State Athletic Commission also has assigned two respected, out-of-state judges – Connecticut’s Glenn Feldman New Jersey’s Steve Weisfeld – to score their rematch.
They’ve replaced Adalaide Byrd, who absurdly scored their first fight 118-110 for Alvarez, and Don Trella, who scored it a draw (114-114).
Feldman, Moretti and Weisfeld will score a high-profile fight in which Alvarez intends to redeem himself after failing two performance-enhancing drug tests for clenbuterol in February. The Mexican superstar’s subsequent suspension forced the cancelation of their May 5 rematch, which has caused a lot of bad blood between Alvarez and Golovkin.
The 28-year-old Alvarez (49-1-2, 34 KOs) wants nothing more than to knock out the 36-year-old Golovkin (38-0-1, 34 KOs), but the challenger realizes that won’t be easy to accomplish.
“I know it’s gonna be a tough fight,” Alvarez said. “I know it’s gonna be very tough, but it’s a matter of time. I’m gonna be working round by round to get my objective.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
