Mexican superstar Canelo Alvarez has returned to his training base of San Diego to open camp for his highly anticipated showdown with unified middleweight world champion Gennady Golovkin.
Alvarez, training for the eighth fight in a row in San Diego, will face Golovkin on Sept. 16 (HBO PPV, 8 p.m. ET) at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas in one of the year’s biggest fights.
Alvarez (49-1-1, 34 KOs), whom some still consider the lineal middleweight champion even though he left the weight division for his past two fights — fighting at junior middleweight and super middleweight — outlined his typical training day:
-
Road work from 6 a.m. to 6:30 a.m
-
Breakfast after the run, followed by rest
-
A light meal or snack at 1 p.m. before heading to his gym
-
Training in the gym from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Friday doing exercise, hitting the mitts, jumping rope, etc.
-
Sparring sessions on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
“Basically, training camp has been waking up early at around 6 in the morning to go running, and then I’ll come back and relax a little bit and prepare myself for the training sessions, sparring, strategy and what we normally work on,” said Alvarez, who turned 27 on Tuesday. “Usually training is almost always the same, but the strategy is different because every fighter is different. The strategy depends on the fight. While you’re preparing for a fight, you don’t know what happens once you’re in the ring.”
Alvarez, like virtually everybody else, expects the fight to be memorable, if not a classic.
“I’m a fighter who is a counterpuncher, and [Golovkin’s] style is a come-forward style, so I think both styles will lead to a great fight,” Alvarez said. “My style, the style that I have, is superior to his style. With sparring, we usually go based on someone who is similar to the fighter in order to have the same style: the height and the weight. That’s usually what we focus on, to get somebody like that.”
Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya, who represents Alvarez, said Alvarez is taking the fight seriously like he takes all of his bouts.
“Canelo is boxing’s most disciplined fighter. He takes every training camp very seriously, and I know that he will be in the best shape of his life for this showdown with Golovkin,” De La Hoya said.
Golovkin (37-0, 33 KOs) opened his training camp at trainer Abel Sanchez’s Summit Gym high in the mountains of Big Bear Lake, California, last week. Golovkin is aiming for his 19th consecutive title defense, one shy of tying Bernard Hopkins’ middleweight division record for defenses.
Golovkin had his 23-fight knockout streak snapped in a unanimous decision win against Daniel Jacobs on March 18 at Madison Square Garden in New York. On May 6, Alvarez cruised to a surprising shutout decision against countryman Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in a super middleweight fight, also at T-Mobile Arena. After that bout, Golovkin joined Alvarez in the ring to announce their fight, which has been in heavy demand by boxing fans for nearly two years.
Leave a comment