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LAS VEGAS – The fight for the middleweight title between Gennady Golovkin and Canelo Alvarez scheduled for Saturday at the sold-out T-Mobile Arena has all the ingredients of an instant classic.
It allows men who are high volume punchers to finish a fight at one go. They are among the most talented men in the sport and they have a legitimate beef.
Fans should be on the edge of their seats in the meantime.
What we have had so far is just weird.
Golovkin, the WBA-WBC champion, is complaining about everything Alvarez about, except that he wears boxers or underpants. Golovkin blamed Alvarez for his two failed scouting tests in February that forced the cancellation of their planned revenge on May 5th.
Golovkin called Alvarez a liar, sneering at Alvarez's explanation that the positive tests resulted from eating contaminated beef.
Alvarez refused to appear at a press conference with Golovkin, forcing the promoters to organize a bizarre event that aired on Facebook and did almost nothing to sell a single ticket for the match. He also refused to pose for the traditional one-on-one photo with Golovkin at Wednesday's press conference, and he did valuable interviews during his camp.
De La Hoya steals the spotlight of the fight week
Oscar De La Hoya, the promoter of the fight, announces first that he is considering a presidential race. It was a great way to steal some of Alvarez and Golovkin's pre-fight coverage.
Then De La Hoya said he would find a new television house for Alvarez after Saturday's fight, ending Alvarez's deal with HBO. It was obvious to anyone, even with a passing interest, that HBO, who had already proclaimed "the heart and soul of boxing," was slowly retiring from the sport. De La Hoya hardly needed to distract from the way he was defending the numbers to discuss something so obvious.
And then, for unknown reasons, but perhaps to set the strategy for his presidential campaign, De La Hoya was defeated at Wednesday's press conference, the biggest event of the fighting week. He also scheduled a press conference on Friday morning to promote the holding of an MMA card in November, another surefire way to steal the headlines of the fight to be held on Saturday.
About the only thing that did not happen was President Donald Trump who denigrated De La Hoya on Twitter, but there is still time for that.
It was a hectic week and months of madness. The fight night can not happen soon enough.
Controversial Judgment Canelo-GGG I
The good news is that soon, all the peripheral problems will stop being important. When they hit the ring around 11 pm ET Saturday, the focus will be on what should have been about everything: Two of the greatest fighters of this generation fighting in a grudge match for one of the most most valuable of boxing.
Their first fight was quite entertaining, even though it was not an instant classic, but there was just about everyone, including the two men who participated, dissatisfied.
Dave Moretti, the only judge in their first fight who will work the second, scored the first 7-5 for Golovkin. Don Trella was 6-6, inexplicably scoring the seventh inning, which seemed to be Golovkin's best run for Alvarez. And Adalaide Byrd had a scratcher, seeing him 10-2 in favor of Alvarez.
This score earned him a brief suspension from his boss, Bob Bennett, executive director of the Nevada Athletic Commission.
"Adalaide is a good judge," Bennett said. "She is an excellent judge. But everyone has this night and it was his.
If she had scored the bout 7-5 for Alvarez, it would not have caused a stir. But she saw a fugitive that no one else saw.
Alvarez sighed when asked if he thought he had won the fight 10-2.
"I've won seven clean innings, I know it," he said. "Other than that, there have been tight tours. I may have won some of them.
The absurdity of Byrd's score, however, dominated the discussion after the fight.
Alvarez debacle fueling GGG discussions
This time, the competitiveness of the fight was lost in the middle of round trips on clenbuterol and contaminated meat.
Gennady Golovkin greets fans as he enters the California Stadium Bench during a press briefing on August 26, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Getty Images)
Golovkin was exceptionally outspoken. He repeated seeing needle marks on Alvarez's body during the first fight. He said the fans sent him pictures of their fight that showed what he said were needle marks.
He has never been so strident on a given subject. He is not English-speaking and this partly explains why his public figure during his years of fighting in the United States was that of a megawatt-megawatt-friendly man who said his fights were "a great drama series" . "a good boy."
He no longer sees Alvarez as a good boy. Talented fighter, good boxer, but not good boy.
"He's very competent, you have to say it," Golovkin said. "Good boxer. He did not hit so hard. Slaps, especially. That's all. Nothing you feel. But he can box … "
And in Golovkin's eyes, he's lying.
"Go," said Golovkin, a disgusted look that squinted when asked if he thought Alvarez's positive anti-doping tests were due to consumption of contaminated beef. "Who believes that? Who would ever believe it?
A reporter asked Golovkin if there was anything Alvarez had done better than he had planned in the first fight.
"Yes," he said, "he ran.
Everyone had a laugh with Golovkin's rare joke, but Alvarez did not laugh. He managed to use it to shoot Golovkin. He noted that coach Abel Sanchez was the one who said he was running.
"I've boxed," said Alvarez about his style in the first fight. "Does Abel know what boxing is?"
But when he was told that it was Golovkin, not Sanchez, who had launched the lining, Alvarez shook his head.
"These are the words of Abel," said Alvarez. "[Golovkin] do not have the balls to say it himself.
The conversation is almost over now. The arena is sold out, which is a good sign for a la carte sales, although there are mixed signs about how this is going on. The first fight was sold at 1.3 million, or 1.4 million if we consider the online sales of RingTV.com, owned by Golden Boy.
Even though the first fight was not the classic that fans had hoped for, it was an entertaining match. It remains to be seen if this was enough to encourage people to spend 85 dollars to see them start again with all the outside noise.
The only thing that seems certain is that no matter how this fight ends, the hard feelings accumulated over the last 12 months will last a long time.
<p class = "canvas-atom-canvas-text Mb (1.0em) Mb (0) – smt Mt (0.8em) – sm" type = "text" content = "More boxing coverage from Yahoo Sports:
• Who will win Canelo-GGG II?
• Gennady Golovkin: "The kind of person hard to dislike"
• Alvarez on Golovkin: "For me, it's personal"
• Boxing experts dismantle Alvarez-Golovkin's revenge
"data-reactid =" 99 ">More boxing coverage from Yahoo Sports:
• Who will win Canelo-GGG II?
• Gennady Golovkin: "The kind of person hard to dislike"
• Alvarez on Golovkin: "For me, it's personal"
• Boxing experts dismantle Alvarez-Golovkin's revenge
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