By Keith Idec
Nearly a year later, Gennady Golovkin believes boxing still hasn’t overcome the controversial result of his fight against Canelo Alvarez.
Kazakhstan’s Golovkin is confident judges Glenn Feldman, Dave Moretti and Steve Weisfeld will do a better job of scoring his upcoming rematch versus Alvarez. But the unbeaten middleweight champion remains bothered by the scrutinized scoring that produced a dubious draw, the only blemish on what was a perfect record (38-0-1, 34 KOs).
“It was terrible,” Golovkin said in quotes released Tuesday from his training camp in Big Bear Lake, California. “It was terrible for me. It was terrible for the people. Of course it was terrible for the sport of boxing, because statistics showed I landed more punches. The fans saw I wanted to fight and Canelo did not want to fight. The fans who watched it live saw the judges bringing crazy scorecards. When the decision was announced, everyone was saying, ‘Oh, come on! This is not real! This is not true!’ Everybody was very mad because these people, the judges, killed the sport that night.”
Judge Adalaide Byrd’s scorecard was widely criticized following that competitive bout because she scored 10 of the 12 rounds for Alvarez (118-110) last September 16 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Moretti scored their fight for Golovkin (115-113), whom Moretti credited with winning seven of the 12 rounds. Don Trella had it even, six rounds apiece (114-114).
CompuBox credited Golovkin for landing 218-of-703 punches, 49 more than Alvarez (169-of-505).
Mexico’s Alvarez (49-1-2, 34 KOs) landed four more power punches, according to those unofficial statistics (114-of-272 to 110-of-342). CompuBox counted nearly twice as many jabs for Golovkin (108-of-361 to 55-of-233).
Harold Lederman, HBO’s unofficial judge, gave Golovkin a 116-112 win in a fight televised via HBO Pay-Per-View.
Golovkin hopes the skewed scoring of their first fight shines an even brighter spotlight on the judges’ work September 15 at T-Mobile Arena.
“This time the world will be watching the fight and the judges,” Golovkin said. “Judges hurt the sport of boxing that day. Maybe the judges had a bad day. This is business.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
