After going 36 rounds against Canelo Alvarez, Gennadiy Golovkin remains unsuccessful in beating his grudge rival, but while he hasn’t vehemently gone against the verdict of the third encounter unlike the previous two, he does feel that he was the one winning against Canelo.
I don’t feel like I lost the fight: Gennadiy Golovkin
Although Golovkin (42-2-1, 37 KOs) looked less effective on Saturday night compared to the first two duels, he didn’t feel much difference in 32-year-old Alvarez, who won world titles in two categories of higher weights after their rematch.
In contrast to the results of their first two middleweight title fights, “GGG” seemed more accepting of Caneloz’s unanimous decision victory in the Trilogy on Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena. The Kazakhstani pugilist, however, said in his post-fight press conference that he did enough to beat Alvarez in that match.
“I don’t feel like I lost the fight,” said Golovkin through a translator. “I don’t think about defeat. It’s not something that concerns me right now because it was a great fight and it was a very clean fight, as you noticed. And we allowed no mistakes. The fight was very competitive, especially in the second half, I felt that I was better than my opponent.”
The 40-year-old got off to a particularly slow start against Alvarez, but he made it through the 9th, 10th, and 11th rounds. Unlike their two previous clashes, all three judges — Dave Moretti (116−112), David Sutherland (115−113), and Steve Weisfeld (115−113) — gave Golovkin more rounds than he looked like he won. If Sutherland and Weisfeld had each scored one more round, the game would have ended in a majority draw.
“It’s not for me to talk about the scores. I just did my job and the judges set these scores. It is their decision,” the unified middleweight champion went on, “I don’t want to minimize his win, but at the same time I didn’t feel he was faster or stronger.”
“The blows that [hit me] were not strong enough. And during the second half, he even lost speed and power. And I think even at the beginning, we didn’t fight much, the two of us. You can see that the number of shots sent was less in the second half. But again, I would say there were no surprises for me,” Golovkin added.
