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Golovkin vs Canelo: The Superfight With Zero Buzz

Pressure On Golovkin and Canelo To Revive Boxing in USA-media-1

 

By Scoop Malinowski

There are required ingredients for a boxing match to be considered a “super fight.” First, you have to have two great fighters at their career peaks ready to rumble. Two, there has to be some degree of tension, grudge or better yet, some bad blood between the two combatants.

Gennady Golovkin vs Canelo Alvarez qualifies as a super fight because of the outstanding successes by each gladiator. But something is missing in the promotion – buzz.

Nobody is really talking about the fight or the fighters though everyone is waiting anxiously to see the event in a couple of weeks.

So far in the pre-fight build up GGG and Canelo have both taken the high road and to my knowledge, have not spoken one ill word about the other. Nothing about ducking for two years by Canelo. Nothing about Golovkin supposedly beating up Canelo in sparring many moons ago. Nothing. It’s almost like these two are businessmen. Not killers. Like Mike Tyson once said, “The fighters today are businessmen. I was a killer.”

McGregor and Mayweather may have fought gently and not hurt each other but at least they gave the public a tremendously entertaining and at times venomous pre-fight hype. GGG and Canelo sound and act like they are preparing for a chess match or a business deal, not to try to bash each other’s heads in.

Boxing is not the same as it used to be. I fondly remember the war of words and psychological warfare between Duran and Leonard, Hopkins and Tarver, Hopkins and Jones, Tyson and Lewis, Tyson and Holyfield, Mayorga and Trinidad and De La Hoya, Hopkins and Trinidad, Lewis and Vitali, Wladimir and Haye, Hearns and Barkley, and of course, Ali and Frazier.

I can’t understand why Canelo and Golovkin will not utter any antagonizing or provocative words at each other. It would make this, so far, No Drama Show infinitely more spicy and feisty.

Mickey Duff once said the early managers of Lennox Lewis were doing a Cecil B. DeMille in reverse. Well, the fighters and the organizers are doing something similar here with Canelo vs GGG. They are turning a Super Bowl into a playoff game. Maybe even a regular season game.

Hopefully, something interesting, something controversial will happen between now and September 16.  Because right now Canelo vs Golovkin is a giant yawn compared to the thrill and anxiety before Duran vs Leonard, Lewis vs Vitali, Hopkins vs Pavlik, Tyson vs Holyfield, etc.

 

 

 

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