LAS VEGAS – Saul Alvarez assured cynics Tuesday that he has taken his third fight against Gennadiy Golovkin very seriously.
Alvarez’s rival is 40 years old and will make his 168-pound debut Saturday night, but the Mexican superstar’s previous experiences versus Golovkin remind him that this will be another difficult fight. Kazakhstan’s Golovkin doesn’t think Alvarez took a comparable approach to his last fight.
Golovkin contended Tuesday during an interview with a small group of reporters at MGM Grand that an overconfident Alvarez overlooked the unbeaten Bivol before they met May 7 at T-Mobile Arena, where Golovkin and Alvarez also will square off for the third time.
“We all saw how he behaved, what he said about his possible fights with Usyk, Makabu, with fighting heavyweights,” Golovkin said through a translator. “And even now, he continues to say that he’s ready to take any challenge, that he’s not afraid. Maybe he just wants to kind of save face. But at the same time, we see that what he said during press conferences showed that he didn’t take Dmitry Bivol seriously and that fight seriously. So, I think he drew his conclusions that this loss kind of brought him back to Earth. And as a result, he will change.”
Guadalajara’s Alvarez (57-2-2, 39 KOs) hadn’t lost since Floyd Mayweather out-pointed him in September 2013 before Bivol beat him unanimously in their 12-round, 175-pound championship match. Alvarez closed as at least a 4-1 favorite, but Bivol thoroughly out-boxed the four-division champion throughout a bout that didn’t appear as close as the 115-113 scores submitted by judges Tim Cheatham, Dave Moretti and Steve Weisfeld indicated.
The outcome of the Alvarez-Bivol bout didn’t surprise Golovkin, but he was taken aback by Alvarez’s pre-fight talk about potentially moving up to heavyweight to challenge champion Oleksandr Usyk for his IBF, IBO, WBA and WBO belts or to cruiserweight to battle WBC champ Ilunga Makabu. It was then that Golovkin realized Alvarez, who was boxing’s consensus pound-for-pound king at that time, underestimated Bivol (20-0, 11 KOs).
Golovkin (42-1-1, 37 KOs) has never mentioned moving up beyond the super middleweight limit at which he will square off against Alvarez in their DAZN Pay-Per-View main event Saturday night ($64.99 for subscribers; $84.99 for non-subscribers).
“He probably lost touch with reality,” Golovkin said, “and believed that he was invincible.”
Though their two middleweight title fights were very competitive, handicappers have installed the 32-year-old Alvarez as at least a 5-1 favorite to beat Golovkin in their 12-round fight for Alvarez’s IBF, WBA, WBC and WBO 168-pound crowns.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
