Ready, Willing & “Abel”,
GGG Trainer Sanchez Talks Canelo & More
By William Trillo
As reported by Pound4Pound.com only moments after it became official, Gennady Golovkin & Canelo Alvarez will meet on September 15th at The T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas in a rematch of their controversial draw that left boxing fans wanting more.
The fight should prove to be a dramatic event for all parties concerned including the trainer of GGG, Abel Sanchez, whom we had a chance to speak to in regard to all things GGG.
Last week was a bit of a roller coaster for Team Golovkin. First the IBF stripped GGG of his title and soon thereafter GGG softened his stance on his money demands to fight Canelo. My knee jerk reaction was that it was a cause and effect situation but Sanchez said no. “The reason Gennady pulled back on his demands was the same reason that he agreed to fight Canelo on May 5th, “said Sanchez, “Gennady feels he owes it to his fans to be in the ring, he owes it to his fans to try to do as much as possible without hurting himself to make sure the fight goes off. He is trying to get himself in the ring as much as he can so the fans can enjoy him before he retires, he is 36 years old, it’s only three or four more years and them his time is finished.”
While all the posturing was going on Golden Boy was throwing out the name of Danny Jacobs as Canelo’s next dance partner, but I knew that was just the promoter playing poker. Everyone including Sanchez was calling that bluff. “They were just throwing the Jacobs name out there to feel the public out and get an idea of how the situation might play out,” exclaimed Sanchez. “They found out the fight the fans want to see is Gennady Golovkin vs. Canelo. Gennady was always willing to try to do as much as he could without hurting himself to make this happen. But there comes a point when you have to have pride in what you do and not be pushed around. Gennady felt like he was being pushed around, being made the second banana. Gennady is the champion; he is the guy who fights clean, he is the man who beat this guy last time. A lot of the things are being said by some of the other organizations, and then there is some of the things that Canelo has not done to comply with them, things that everybody else does, that other fighters do…Golovkin takes this to heart basically saying, “Why are we all doing it and that Diva is not?”
Whatever the case may be, and whatever the final purse split is for the fighters, it’s a done deal now and in a few months boxing fans will get to watch these two settle the score. It appeared hopeless earlier in the day on Wednesday but as Sanchez noted,” As long as they were talking there was always hope. Now they have come to terms and the fans will get the fight they want and Golovkin can knock Canelo out once and for all or dominate him even more and they can put last September to rest.”
In regard to the IBF stripping his fighter Sanchez didn’t pull any punches. “It unfortunate these organizations have these agendas,” noted Sanchez. “Here we have a young man who is doing something that rarely is done, and that is being a unified champion. Terrance was one of them, Bernard Hopkins was another. I think they need to take things like this into consideration before stripping someone who is on a quest to be a unified champi9on like Gennady. It’s an unfortunate thing, they have a mandatory with a guy who has 12 fights. In his last fight he fought in an eight round fight off TV against a guy who was 22-23. It took him 6 rounds to knock this guy out! That you are stripping one of the greatest fighters of this era for a mandatory like that just does not make any sense to me. I wasn’t surprised they did this at all, they have agendas. It’s the pressure the get from other managers and other promoters to do an unthinkable thing like that. They are shortsighted.”
IBF belt or not, GGG vs. Golvkin will be the boxing event of the year, count on that. There is going to be a lot of talking going on between now and then. It’s safe to say feathers will get ruffled and feelings will get hurt before the September date, but when the bell rings for round 13 the only thing that will matter is who will be left standing when the dust settles.
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