Oscar De La Hoya churned out an open letter to the boxing world on Monday in response to the many critics that think Saul Canelo Alvarez received a gift decision win over Gennady Golovkin last Saturday night in Las Vegas, Nevada.
De La Hoya believes that his fighter Canelo (50-1-2, 34 KOs) deserved his questionable 12 round majority decision victory over WBA/WBC middleweight champion at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Unfortunately for De La Hoya, many of the fans largely saw it differently in believing that Canelo only got the decision due to him being in Vegas in getting preferential treatment from the judges.
The fight played out like the first match last year with Canelo starting fast, and then gassing badly and getting worked over by Golovkin in the second half of the contest. Canelo didn’t have anything left in the gas tank after round 7, and I was a race to the bottom for the 28-year-old Mexican star. Golovkin hit Canelo with tremendous shots in the last six rounds of the fight and did enough to earn what a decision in the eyes of the boxing public.
”It wouldn’t be boxing if thousands of keyboard warriors weren’t talking (or tweeting) complete nonsense in the hours and days after Canelo began to cement his legacy as an all-time great fighter,” De La Hoya said about the critics.
The fans have been ridiculing Canelo and the judges ever since last Saturday night, and it appears that it’s bothering the Golden Boy boss De la Hoya. The fans would be backing Canelo right now in victory if he hadn’t fallen apart so badly in the second half of the match. Canelo fought well enough to win 4 of the first 6 rounds of the fight, but after the 6th, the Golden Boy star fell apart in getting nailed with pinpoint laser blasts from GGG. Canelo was moving his head trying not to get hit by Golovkin, but he couldn’t get out of the way of his punches. Golovkin was hitting Canelo with much harder punches than he had first fight.
”The three judges were chosen by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. Given the result of the first fight, NSAC was under a lot of scrutiny to come up with the fairest group of judges possible,” De La Hoya said.
I don’t think it matters what De La Hoya says about the judges for the Canelo-GGG2 fight. The fans have their own opinions. De La Hoya might as well be sticking his finger in a leaking dam to try and stop the water. The boxing fans saw the Canelo vs. GGG 2 rematch in huge numbers, and many of them saw it overwhelming as a robbery with Alvarez getting a decision that he didn’t deserve. The fans have a choice. They can either believe what their eyes showed them or they can listen to De La Hoya talk about how the judges were carefully selected for the Canelo vs. GGG2 fight. The fans are going to believe what they saw, which is unfortunate for De La Hoya. It means that rather than Canelo being seen as the fighter that handed Golovkin his first loss, he’s seen instead as a guy that received another questionable win. In the past, Canelo has been involved in controversial matches with these fighters:
– Erislandy Lara
– Gennady Golovkin – First and second fight
– Austin Trout
Floyd Mayweather – one judge scored the fight 114-114. Canelo lost the fight by wide scores on the other two judges’ scorecards
”Of course, GGG can win a decision in Vegas,” De La Hoya said in response to Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler saying that he’s not sure that GGG can win a decision in Las Vegas. ”He is going to need to fight a higher level of competition – and then fight better than that opponent – to earn a victory in the mecca of boxing,” De La Hoya said.
The boxing public already saw Golovkin beat Canelo in the first fight in Las Vegas last year on September 16, 2017. In the second GGG-Canelo fight last Saturday, many more fans once again saw Golovkin winning. Canelo’s victory was tainted because it was another controversial fight with the judges scoring it differently than how the overall fans saw it. Like in the first Canelo-GGG fight a year ago, a minority of the fans thought Canelo deserved the win, but the vast majority felt that Golovkin had been given an incredibly raw deal.
De La Hoya is going to need to live with the fans feeling that Canelo was given a gift over GGG. Unless De La Hoya wants to do something about it by matching Canelo against Golovkin in a trilogy fight in a neutral venue, he’s going to have to develop thick skin and try to ignore what people are saying about his fighter. Golovkin is game for a third fight, but De La Hoya doesn’t seem to fancy the idea of making a third fight yet, and some fans that he might not ever make another fight between Canelo and GGG.