Canelo Alvarez has a distinct advantage heading into his rematch with Gennady Golovkin.

Boxing can be a game of inches. It’s all about who can leverage their strategies and opportunities first. It pisses me off when people believe fighting is all about who strikes first, strikes last. That may be true when we think about a street fight maybe, but it’s antiquated thinking when you’re talking about sanctioned combat between two skilled opponents. It’s a simplistic way of looking at things.

What wins fights is strategy. That means strategy in your fakes and feints, strategy in your footwork and angles, it means pushing your game plan on your opponent and forcing them to fight your fight. For that very reason I happened to agree with the majority of people who believed Gennady “GGG” Golovkin won the first bout between rival Canelo Alvarez. Golovkin pushed Canelo around the ring, fought his style of fight for many of the middle rounds and edged out the Mexican superstar. Canelo also had a great deal of success in the beginning and end of the fight, which leads me to believe that an Alvarez win in the rematch may be more likely than a Golovkin victory.

Yes, I just said Golovkin did the work to edge out the first match. But we have to consider all the great work Canelo Alvarez was able to accomplish during the match. He used in and out movement, circled out when he was pressed to the ropes and landed sharp combinations that may have never rocked the bigger Golovkin but certainly got his attention. From a strategic standpoint, Canelo Alvarez simply has more options to utilize in the rematch than Gennady Golovkin.

“But Golovkin is the bigger, stronger guy! He’ll definitely overwhelm him this time around, and throw more punches too!” You see that? That’s an argument for a moron who doesn’t understand boxing. Golovkin’s pressure style is predicated on moving his opponents around the ring, trapping them at the ropes and setting up the kill shot. While he has obtained knockouts in a number of different ways, mainly from left or right hooks, we’ve never seen him commit to being a disciplined counter striker that lays traps for his opponent and time his shots perfectly. There’s a reason Golovkin is loved by fans and it’s because he’s an all action fighter who is always in a position to punch, whether moving forwards or backwards. The problem is that he isn’t the greatest at fighting moving backwards.

Canelo Alvarez on the other hand is adept at both playing aggressor as well as counter fighter. For the most part, Canelo likes to set traps and read his opponents with designs on finding openings and weaknesses. He can also move forward and attack on straight lines as well as angles, moving around his opponents after landing fast combinations. He has the speed, he has the youth, and he has the kind of pop on his punches that will get any boxer’s attention, size disadvantage or otherwise.

It’s for this reason that Golovkin should be worried about the rematch. Canelo has a ton of strategies to fall back on and could be a completely different fighter than who Golovkin last encountered. “GGG” on the other hand is more likely to take a similar approach to the first bout, but that’s not to say he can’t pull out his own bag of tricks himself. Simply said, if either man expects to win the rematch by relying on what came beforehand, then they have rude awakening awaiting them come September. My gut is telling me that Canelo has the advantage heading into this one and Golovkin needs to hatch the perfect game plan to find success.

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