Golovkin vs Canelo 3: Betting odds on the fight

Kazakh boxer Gennady Golovkin and Mexican Saul Alvarez will meet in their third fight - for the title of absolute world champion in the super middleweight division. The WBA, WBC, WBO and IBF belts are at stake. The fight will take place on September 17, 2022. The venue is the T-mobile arena in Paradise, Nevada.

We've prepared a review of the betting odds, plus an exclusive tip for the Canelo vs Golovkin fight.

Golovkin to win

18/5

Draw

25/1

Canelo to win

23/100

The fight will be televised live by DAZN. The start time of the fight will be available later but remember it is very rare for a boxing match to start at the exact advertised time.

Odds for the Golovkin v Alvarez fight 

Despite the light heavyweight defeat, Canelo remains the bookmakers' favourite. He has been unstoppable in his weight class. You can bet on Alvarez's win with odds of 23/100 .

Golovkin had an excellent fight against Murata, but it is impossible to deny that he has an age problem which will only be getting worse. Wins are getting harder and harder for GGG, so it is no surprise that he is the underdog in this fight again.

Statistics and physical data

The fighters have roughly similar body shapes and weight but Canelo is nine years younger than his opponent. 

Gennady Golovkin

• World Amateur champion. Olympic Silver medallist. IBF, IBO and WBA Super champion of the world.

• Record: 44 fights, 42 wins, 1 loss, 1 draw.

Golovkin to win

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Bet

18/5

Golovkin clearly relaxed after losing to Alvarez in his second fight. Let's be honest, neither Derevyanchenko nor Murata were even close to the level of the Mexican. The latter wore Golovkin down to a horrible state.

GGG is certainly not prepared to fight aggressively for 12 rounds and throw himself at Saul as he did four years ago. His entire focus will be solely on experience, timings and technical background.

Let's imagine Golovkin wins that fight. It wouldn't be a surprise if he ended his career after that. Right now Gennady is just ready to end this long-running story. 

What to expect from Golovkin in the fight against Alvarez? 

Since his second fight with Canelo, Golovkin has been fighting as if he were playing a chess game. Slowly and gradually he prepared combinations and rarely forced even one round. Sometimes he even preferred to give his opponent a couple of three-minute rounds and take punches, just to prepare himself for the championship rounds.

But as it turned out, he can't always get out from under the hail of blows without losing power. And the fight against Murata proved that. The brash Japanese was not afraid to go for exchanges and lead the fight, so that by the eighth round he had already exhausted Golovkin. Of course, in the end, Triple G turned the situation around and took the win by knockout, but how difficult it was! 

In his fight against Canelo, Gennady will try to spend as much time in deep defence as possible and see if Saul regains his former speed in his own division. Golovkin will attack only in a defensive manner, at least in the first half of the fight. Then he has to tighten up the fight with some clinch combinations and try to outbox Canelo at the closest possible distance without giving him a chance to hit the body.

Golovkin's winning chances 

He does not have a great deal of chance. Everything will depend solely on the physical condition of Alvarez after his comeback to the super middleweight division. Golovkin is unlikely to be able to knock him out, so we have to rely only on the judged victory. 

And here we have a hitch. The judges will probably be on the side of the dominant champion and they can hardly count Canelo's defeat again even in case of a very close fight. The belt holder often (but tacitly) gets these privileges. It is Golovkin's responsibility to take the final rounds specifically, and to do so in a dominant manner with little or no punching back. 

The task is disastrously difficult, so there's no arguing with the bookmakers' odds on this one.

Golovkin's last five fights 

The defeat to Alvarez remains the only one in Golovkin's career. He has four wins in his last five fights.

Saul Canelo Alvarez

• WBA Super and WBC champion, WBO world super middleweight champion. Highest paid boxer in the world.

• Record: 61 fights, 57 wins, 2 losses, 2 draws.

Alvarez to win

Bet

23/100

A boxer who got tired of his own dominance and moved up to a new weight class. The victory over Kovalev in the heavyweight division seems to have completely turned his head, after which Saul decided that he could beat the whole division. Certainly he was not intimidated by the talented and undefeated Bivol.  

Canelo carelessly believed his technical abilities would be enough alone, but he forgot that without speed and endurance his combinations don't work and turn him into nothing more than a solid but average boxer. That's exactly how he looked in his last light-heavyweight fight. 

But Saul has no self-doubts at super middleweight and took the fight against Golovkin for that reason alone. A dominant defence should put him back in the race for belts in other divisions and give him confidence in his abilities. 

What to expect from Alvarez in a fight with Golovkin? 

A fighting weight of over 80 kilos has not only killed Alvarez's endurance, but has also seriously affected the accuracy of his punches. You can already collect a selection of hits on Bivol's shoulder instead of his head. And no, it's not the difference in physique at all. 

Saul has clearly missed his lighter weight and wants to feel the speed again. We will not see aggressive attacks in the first rounds, but we may see some long combinations with pauses. His main goal is to increase the speed of combos and body punches. These have always been the most dangerous weapons in his arsenal. 

Alvarez will be a lot smarter than many people think. Once he tries out his series, he will also go deep into defence and force Golovkin to attack. 

Alvarez's chances of winning 

Even despite the beating he took in the fight with Bivol, he now has far more energy for a full 12-round fight than GGG. Of course, in recent performances both have started to drop their hands in the later rounds, but Canelo was still able to defend with body slips at that point. At the same time Gennady with his hands down is no longer able to evade his opponent's blows so quickly.

It is the difference in the way the boxers behave between rounds 7 and 12 that will probably decide the outcome of this fight. No matter what kind of mistakes Canelo made in his fight against Dmitriy, he is going to be able to react much quicker and catch Golovkin with a series of not too strong, but accurate punches. 

This time he won't have to put in his best effort in every attack to knock down a huge opponent. Saul is able to win by decision of the judges and do everything he can to look like a favourite in their eyes.

Alvarez's last five fights 

Bivol became the first boxer in the history of the division to defeat Canelo. Before him, Saul had only lost to Floyd Mayweather at light middleweight back in September 2013. 

Golovkin vs Canelo: Tip for the fight 

Seeing Golovkin as an all-round champion at the end of his career is a dream I share with hundreds of thousands of his fans. The knockout punch, though no longer as formidable, is still with him. His resilience is also unstoppable. But his endurance has begun to fail, and I fear this is the beginning of the end. 

The smart Murata has found the key to Triple G's defence. His straights to the body went several times and in the later rounds forced Golovkin to defend his body more and more. Can you imagine how a lighter version of Canelo would take advantage of that? He's obviously not going to be able to punch Golovkin's head, and he doesn't need to. Alvarez will fight back with the same methodical chess and try to take his opponent apart in 12 rounds. 

But most of all I'm confused by the judges' team in this fight. I can't imagine how dominant Golovkin must be to get the desired 10-9 per round. Going into the fight in the same condition as he did in 2018, I'd have no doubt that he's capable of outboxing the current Alvarez. Except the years go by, and running out of energy in the fight with Murata was a serious wake up call for me.

The saddest conclusion and the sincerest inner desire to make a mistake this time:

My prediction is that Alvarez wins by judges decision.

Alvarez to win by decision

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Bet

11/10

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