Draw leaves many questions unanswered

Las Vegas, NV---The sport of boxing should have witnessed a hat trick on the night of September 16. For starters, supremacy in the middleweight division should have been established, but instead we had a hung jury. We should have seen boxing’s new pay-per-view attraction. However, we still don’t have a definitive answer to that question. We should have seen a great fight. Well, we did. But 1 for 3 is only acceptable in the sport of baseball. But instead it seems like we may have observed the first tussle of what will be assuming that nothing prevents it from happening is a trilogy between two elite fighters. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez of Guadalajara Jalisco, Mexico and Gennady “GGG” Golovkin of Kazakhstan fought to a split draw before a crowd of 22,358 at the T-Mobile arena.

The scorecards read 118-110 for Canelo, 115-113 for Golovkin, with the

last scored even at 114-114. Canelo, who fought gallantly, especially in the second half of the fight, missed the opportunity to snatch the WBA, WBC, and the IBF trinkets right from the palms of the sport’s most avoided fighter. Canelo, who appeared to have dug himself in a hole early on, fought with urgency late in an effort to tighten the scorecards.

Meanwhile Golovkin failed to pull the trigger in the middle portion of the fight. Canelo looked fatigued and there were moments in which Canelo looked like he was about to go.

Canelo-Golovkin was a tale of two fights. Golovkin was the aggressor in the first half, while Canelo turned up in the latter half. Maxboxing.com had it a draw. The contest saw many shifts in momentum. There were a lot of close rounds. Judge Adalaide Byrd’s scores of 118-110 (10 rounds to 2) is as inappropriate and as egregious of a scorecard the sport has seen in quite some time. Especially when you taking into consideration the magnitude of this fight, the enormity of the affair as a whole.

“It was a big drama show,” Golovkin said, who’s ledger changed to 37-0-1, (33). “The scoring is not my fault. I put pressure on him every round.”

The fight opened up with both fighters feeling each other out. Golovkin stalked Canelo, while Canelo countered effectively. Golovkin threw his jab in repetitive succession. It was a hard thudding jab. From its inception it seemed that Golovkin’s size and ability to cut off ring off on his counterpart created a major dilemma for Canelo.

But in the second round Canelo exhibited great defensive prowess, ultimately frustrating Golovkin. Canelo, 27, boxed beautifully the remainder of the way. The second round marked a big one for the fan favorite on Mexican Independence Day weekend. In the third frame Golovkin pressed the action hard, continued to cut the ring off, ultimately backing Canelo against the ropes. Canelo literally looked like a New York City bus, stopping at every corner. In the fourth round Canelo appeared gassed. The relentless pressure the 35-year-old Golovkin was applying may have forced Canelo to shift into higher gears much.Not to mention that Canelo may have been hurt from a body shot in the previous round.

“There wasn’t any power that surprised me,” Alvarez said, now 49-1-2, (34). “In the first rounds, I came out to see what he had. Then I was building from there. I think I won eight rounds. I felt that I won the fight.”

This marks the second draw in Canelo’s career. The bout with Golovkin was his biggest fight to date, not including his only defeat, which came at the hands of Floyd Mayweather. In lieu of Mayweather’s recent retirement, the “sweet science” is desperately looking for a new face to carry the sport’s mantle for years to come.

Unfortunately the spot still remains vacant. On the surface Canelo looked like a shoe-in had he gotten the win. But Golovkin had something else to say about that. Had Golovkin won, he would have also obtained all of the accolades of being an elite fighter, just probably not on the level of Canelo.