Gennady Golovkin insists he’s UNDEFEATED vs. Canelo heading into third bout of GGG-Canelo trilogy

Officially, Gennady Golovkin is winless at 0-1-1 against Saul Alvarez heading into the third installment of the GGG-Canelo trilogy on Saturday night in Las Vegas.

Or, to hear Golovkin explain it, he’s really 2-0.

‘It’s not just my opinion,’ Golovkin told DailyMail.com through his translator.

The unified middleweight champion is undeniably right about that.

Golovkin and Alvarez may have fought to a split-decision draw in 2017, but judge Adalaide Byrd’s 118–110 scorecard in favor of Canelo was widely lampooned as ‘absurd’ by fans and media alike. Meanwhile, ESPN’s Dan Rafael and HBO’s Harold Lederman scored that fight 116–112, unofficially, in favor of Golovkin.

For that matter, the now-deceased Lederman also had Golovkin beating Canelo by that same score in 2018. Alas, the official judges viewed things differently and awarded Alvarez a majority decision, even though Golovkin out-landed Canelo again, and never once had his back against the ropes in the fight.

But don’t think for a second that the 40-year-old Golovkin is haunted by the only two blemishes on his career record.

‘The opinion of one incompetent person would never have any effect on me,’ he said of the judges’ decisions.

Nor is Golovkin concerned with his advancing age or his closing window to vanquish his lone defeat. From his perspective, Canelo’s reign as boxing’s biggest star already began to wane in May, when the natural middleweight moved up to face Dmitry Bivol at light heavyweight only to suffer his second career defeat.

‘I’m glad that masks were torn from their faces at some point,’ Golovkin said, suggesting Canelo was exposed. ‘People were brought back to reality — fans also.

The GGG-Canelo dynamic has shifted since their first bout in 2017 – a fight that had been on every boxing fan’s wish list since Alvarez captured his first title at 160 pounds with an unanimous-decision win over legend Miguel Cotto.

Golovkin, a unified middleweight champion at the time, was snacking on the rest of the division by knocking out Willie Monroe, David Lemieux and Dominic Wade while earning a reputation for a surprisingly Mexican style under then-trainer Abel Sanchez.

Like many boxers from Canelo’s homeland, Kazakhstan’s Golovkin eschewed defensive tactics, instead gambling that his overwhelming power (37 of his 42 wins have come by knockout) and a sturdy chin would be too much for opponents. In fights against converted welterweight Kell Brook and the powerful Daniel Jacobs, Golovkin seemingly dropped his defense altogether at times, daring his lesser opponents to match his firepower.

Golovkin was right on both occasions, although Jacobs did go the distance with him in 2017.

That victory set up the first installment of the GGG-Canelo trilogy, in which the undefeated, and seemingly unbeatable, Golovkin was viewed as a heavy favorite.

Now, though, Golovkin is a heavy underdog against Canelo, who, until very recently, looked just as unbeatable as he had seemed five years earlier.

Having run out of good competition at middleweight, Alvarez has been devouring opponents at 168 (Saturday’s weight limit) and 175, where he knocked out decorated Russian Sergey Kovalev to win the WBO light heavyweight crown in 2019.

To many, Canelo had replaced Golovkin as boxing’s most unstoppable force, but GGG naturally sees things differently. While the 5-foot-8 Alvarez impressed experts by easily beating bigger fighters like Callum Smith, Billy Joe Saunders, Avni Yıldırım and Caleb Plant, Golovkin dismisses those fights as easy paychecks for Canelo.

‘I know Canelo very well,’ Golovkin said. ‘And I definitely don’t consider him unbeatable. It’s just that the opponents he was given, through his promotion, through his work with Matchroom with [promoter] Eddie Hearn, those were business projects until Bivol came his way and brought him back to earth.

‘Those fights were more like expo bouts.’

And, as Golovkin is quick to point out, Canelo’s mystique was finally undone in his unanimous-decision defeat to Bivol in May — a fight that could provide GGG with a roadmap to victory on Saturday, if he cared to look.

‘I haven’t watched the full fight,’ Golovkin told DailyMail.com in August, although he may have viewed a recording since then.

If he did watch, Golovkin would see some distinct similarities with his first fight against Canelo, which many, including his current trainer Johnathon Banks, felt he deserved to win.

‘Bivol… he used his jab to beat him,’ said Banks, Golovkin’s trainer since 2019 and the former IBO cruiserweight champion. ‘The first fight [Golovkin] fought against Canelo, he used his jab to beat him. That’s the only similarities I’ve seen.’

It’s Banks who has been charged with overseeing Golovkin’s evolution from the Mexican style he famously adopted for much of the last decade, to one more reminiscent of Eastern European boxers.

He isn’t reinventing Golovkin, nor is Banks trying to unearth a new fountain of motivation for the future Hall of Famer. To Banks, Golovkin is more like a classic car that needs to be maintained and tweaked, rather than rebuilt altogether.

‘I’m not trying to completely change him,’ Banks told DailyMail.com. ‘There’s a reason you were a world champion. You were dominate. So let’s stick to those facts and just add some pieces.’

Although Golovkin is hesitant to give away too many details about his strategies, Banks said his pupil has embraced change, while pushing himself through a challenging training camp in Big Bear, California.

Banks’ basic principle is simple: Why rely on one strategy to win, when you can have several?

‘I ain’t going into a situation with only one way to win, and if that doesn’t work, you just throw your hands up,’ Banks said. ‘Let’s have multiple ways to win.’

Golovkin, to his credit, has embraced Banks’ philosophy.

‘I think that I’m now a more versatile fighter, and I know how to use my versatility in a better way,’ he said. ‘So I evolved as a fighter, but I have not changed. I’m still a fighter; I will always be a fighter. What changed is the weight class for this fight and my age.’

Age, of course, is becoming a major consideration, not just for Golovkin, but his family.

As Golovkin told DailyMail.com, his eldest son has been pressuring him to step away from boxing. And although he remains in world-class shape (Banks credits Golovkin’s ‘clean living’ for his longevity), the fighter cannot help but listen.

‘If we look at the new generation, they’re different, they’re smarter and they sometimes want to tell us what to do,’ Golovkin said. ‘And you can see what other prominent athletes have been doing. LeBron [James] wants to play with his son [Bronny].

‘My son, the oldest one, can say, ‘Dad, maybe it’s time to wrap it up, maybe it’s time for you to stop doing what you’ve been doing for so long.’

A victory over Canelo on Saturday would certainly be a perfect farewell to the sport, even if the Las Vegas oddsmakers see it as highly unlikely for Golovkin.

‘It’s not like he’s an impossible guy to beat, but he’s a hard fight for anybody,’ Banks said of Canelo.

What’s different now, as opposed to 2017 and 2018, is that Golovkin doesn’t need to be the ‘one-punch knockout guy,’ according to Banks. He can win with ‘the boxing portion of it, not the brawling.’

But there remains the lingering question about whether Golovkin can win on the scorecards, if necessary.

It might help that Byrd isn’t working Saturday’s fight after her lopsided card in favor of Canelo five years ago.

However, judges Dave Moretti and Steve Weisfeld have been assigned to Saturday’s fight after raising eyebrows with their scorecards for Canelo’s humbling defeat to Bivol. Both had the Russian winning, 115-113, but were faced with criticism from YouTuber and boxer Logan Paul, among others, who said that narrow margin of victory was another example of the sport’s broken judging system. (Moretti had Golovkin beating Canelo in the first fight, 115-113, while he and Weisfeld both had Alvarez winning the rematch by that same score)

Despite that ominous recent history, Golovkin isn’t frightened of the scorecards and refuses to go into Saturday strictly searching for a knockout.

‘No I’m not concerned about it,’ Golovkin said about the prospect of a judges’ decision on Saturday. ‘Let’s take his last fight against Bivol. That fight showed that judges can be reasonable. They gave him some more rounds than expected, but they voted for Bivol, so the conclusion is that it’s not mandatory to knock out Canelo to win.

‘There could be judges with common sense.’