Gennady Golovkin vs. Saúl Álvarez - at last, IB's official RBR

When watched without a partisan hat on and when discussed reasonably, this fight was an extremely close one.

115-113 to Golovkin was mine and truly is the "consensus" score.

115-113 is a very close fight.

The suspect people have been trying to claim a 114-114 score means you are on Canelo's payroll and one of the worst robberies of the year and of all time. Those people are, frankly, ridiculous. 114-114, in my opinion, sounds more accurate than 117-111 Golovkin as many of the routine fanboys have regurgitated it as (while expressing the above sentiment of others who scored it closer being on Golden Boy's payroll, too).

 

Byrd's card was 10-2 not 8-4 lol

 

I scored this only once, live.

I remember thinking Golovkin should get it but I can legit see it going the other way.

It is a consensus view that Golovkin deserved the fight but it should also be consensus that Canelo put on a great performance also.

The draw wasn't outlandish at all for me. Going into the fight most people believed Golovkin was the best MW in the world, I'd say most still believe that now but everyone should agree going into the rematch these are deserving of the top two ranking positions, even if stylistically BJS might just 120-108 them both.

 

I was at the pub and I got so tanked that I don't really remember the fight except for a few blips through the black missing sections, I had to rewatch it the next day

 

Initially I had it 7-5 to Golovkin. A couple of rewatches later and I had it 8-4 to Golovkin. It's clear that not only was he constantly outlanding Canelo, but that Canelo could not take his power and was forced into retreat mode for 3/4 of the fight. Saul looked great in his spurts of action, but if you slomo the fight you will see that Golovkin often picks the punches off on the gloves or the body punches on his arm.

I thought that it was a great fight, I really enjoyed it, and while I think that GGG won fairly clearly, that Saul actually proved more in it than Golovkin did. I and many others had doubts about Alvarez' chin, and whether he could face a legitimate challenge at 160 without folding. Saul's footwork had taken a quantum leap in quality. I for one thought he'd gas exactly when he did ... but I never expected the sweet late-fight rally from Canelo, which showed his heart.

I think the rematch will be brilliant.

Golovkin clearly can improve, both by working Canelo's body over and by pressing the action right from the start, in a bid to gas Canelo out late. He can also work on his combination punching up close. Golovkin is a measured fighter, but he could benefit from stringing a few rapid-fire combinations together in order to mix up the attack.

Canelo looked very good in the spots where he marshalled his forces to counterattack. Unfortunately those spots were too few and too short to really carry the fight. His big challenge is to take what he showed us and to improve it by developing a big gas tank. Alvarez could become a very scary dude if he could fight 2 minutes of every round how he now does for a minute.

 

For shame! What would your dogs say? Improve yourself, sir, improve yourself! For the sake of the little ones.

 

I had it a draw and can see a 7-5 in canelos favour at best for him.

 

Balanced assessment. I think he was killing himself to make 154, and every attribute he has has improved at 160. He looked flat against those fighters you mention !

 

I have a very similar palette knife painting, Leonid Afremov?

 

I think the "well if you score this round to X instead then you can make a case for him winning" comments are very weird. Like, yeah if you change your mind on a handful of rounds surprisingly the outcome will be different.

Anyway, consensus seems to be good close fight with GGG edging it. I've seen very few who picked Canelo to win give GGG props for performing so well despite losing a step (NOT being shot, he is not shot at all). I've not really seen enough people give Canelo credit either. I thought he'd get stopped personally, he showed me he's a much tougher and elusive fighter than I have credit for.

If I remember right I had it 8-4 GGG. Can see a 7-5, couldn't see the draw though. Key point here should be that both dudes are elite and fun to watch. Canelo fighting twice a year really ****s me off because we should be seeing more of him. Also annoying that we're only seeing GGG against other top talent at this stage of his career but it is what it is, the earlier years at least give me some fun highlights to watch when I get home drunk

 

This often happens when you have fanboys that have convinced themselves that Fighter X could have won every round and therefore a 118-110 scorecard is plausible. They then spend endless time flogging a dead horse and trying to turn an 80% consensus of who won the fight into their own personal view. Folks get annoyed and positions harden.

Me too. I had him gassing by the 6th and outta there by the end of the 9th. Canelo is far more mobile than he ever was and his chin seems to have improved with the extra weight. I reckon Golovkin would have KO'd every 154 version of Canelo that we have seen. The dumbass, he was sipping celery smoothies for years and killing himself to make a weight that he actually performed WORSE at

The truth, in one small paragraph ^

 

I was pure salty about the result but I smelt it coming off a mile away and put money down on a draw at 20\1. So I would like to take a moment to thank the competence of the judges.

 

Why do I feel like this is some kind of dig at me, as if I'm defending Byrd's card or something lol. I'm just trying to go over the rounds she scored for Canelo and trying to see if there are reasons to support her score. One thing we found out here is that one of those rounds that Byrd gave to Canelo (round 6) IB actually scored for Canelo, so that should lessen your bewilderment about Byrd's card at least by one round. How is talking about what happened in rounds of a close fight "flogging a dead horse"? This is exactly the kind of thing I said yesterday about how closed-minded you are about rounds 4-9 that you've already scored to Golovkin you're not willing to go back and take a closer look at what happened in those rounds. This is your biggest shortcoming, your Triple G fandom is so great that you won't allow yourself to open your eyes as to what Canelo was doing in rounds like that. It's no wonder you're so dead set at 8-4 Golovkin and still won't admit that a draw is reasonable, even though IB and many others have. You're simply too much of a closed-minded Golovkin fanboy to score the bout objectively and admit that a draw or even a close Canelo win is perfectly reasonable as IB and many others have.

Oh and as far as 118-110 being plasible, I can't speak for anyone else, but I've stated repeatedly that "it wasn't a 9-3 or 10-2 kind of fight" and that I try to be fair to Golovkin splitting the close rounds (like rounds 4 and 5) even though I could have scored Round 5 to Canelo I gave Credit to Golovkin and gave him that round because of that big right hand and his effective aggression in the final minute despite Canelo's quality work in the early stages of the round. And on that point, I've seen plenty of people argue that Triple G winning 9-3 or 10-2 is plausible, I've ran into several fans who cite Maliganggi's 9-3 or even Atlas's 10-2 hilarious as some sort of proof that Golovkin won the fight easily which is pure comedy and basically what you're trying to attribute to Canelo fans when that isn't the case since no Canelo fan that I'm aware of is arguing that Canelo won 10 rounds to 2. You need to my view split some of the rounds that were very even, like 4,5, even to an extent 6,7,8 rather then just automatically give Golovkin rounds because he started doing better.

Of course you did, you seriously underrated Canelo and what he could do to Golovkin and now you're finally realizing how wrong you were. The only time he was seriously drained at 154 was against Liam Smith, which happened after he had been fighting at 155 for years. He wasn't killing himself to make that weight "for years". He was slowly growing into a Middleweight and outgrowing 154.

 

I hope you took those ****ers for a big chunk o change.

 

You are a complete failure at life and were losing your mind fight night attacking me while I and everyone else were watching and discussing the fight like normal people LOL. I had it 116-112 or 117-111 Golovkin(I don't remember exactly) Remember your atrociously biased card for the Jacobs fight?