In his own words, Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez outlines his plan for the future and says sometimes “defeats are good things”
AFTER yet another big win in my career, I’m going to take my time to decide what’s next. My body needs to rest. Last year I fought four times in 11 months and I now need to take my time a little bit. I’ll be back in maybe May or September, I don’t know.
I will not completely stop training but I will do just light training until my hand and body is completely recovered. We’ll take it from there and see how long it takes for my body to recover.
My hands hurts right now. I have had the same issue since the Caleb Plant fight and it started to get really bad during the fight. I need surgery. It’s not broken, no, but it’s a meniscus injury. It’s my wrist. (A TFCCT tear to a piece of cartilage in the wrist which effects the body’s ability to mobilise that joint without feeling impingement and sharp pain.)
Towards the end of the fight I started to get a little fatigued and that’s because we’ve not been able to train explosively in the gym. But, despite all the problems we had, I was very happy with my performance.
I don’t hear the scores at the end of the fight. I just hear “And still champion”. That’s it. I respect the judges and how they saw it, and it’s fine. I’m okay with that. A win is a win and it’s hugely satisfying to win this fight. Obviously I wanted to get that KO but it didn’t come because Gennadiy Golovkin is a great fighter. That’s why there are 12 rounds in a fight, so you can show who is the best. That’s what I did and I’m really happy with that I did. With my hand problems, I still out-jabbed the best jabber in the world in Gennadiy Golovkin.
I respect him as a fighter. As a person, I don’t know. But I consider myself a good person and I said to him, “I’m glad to share the ring with you. We gave the people three good fights. These fights will be in the history of boxing.”
Everybody, when they watch me from outside the ring, thinks they can beat me, but very few people can beat me in the ring. It’s difficult to beat me. What I felt was that Golovkin didn’t throw his right hand because maybe he felt I was going to counterpunch him. Maybe that’s why he only threw the left hand. It was very difficult to hit him, too, because he protects everything.
I didn’t feel like I lost track of where I was going (following a May defeat against Dmitry Bivol). Defeats are good things sometimes because you learn how to come back and you learn what not to do in terms of wanting to get better. I think it was very important for me. As a man I had to accept it. I saw the changes I had to make. That’s life.
A lot of things happen in your personal life, things that are tough and you have to deal with, but, at the end of the day, it’s about having a strong mind and always know why you’re pushing on forward. People perhaps don’t see the sacrifices that you have made, and that’s okay, but many things happen to a person and you have to try to manage them to be 100 per cent prepared. Because if you’re not prepared, it doesn’t feel good. Ultimately, for this fight I did things in the right way and the result came through.
It’s very important to be the best fighter in the world. It’s important to my country and also me personally. This is one of the biggest wins of my career and I’m delighted with it. I will now continue making history.
When I say I don’t want to fight a Mexican, it’s because I am 100 per cent Mexican. But I don’t care. All my life I have been someone who will fight anybody. Do you think I don’t want to fight a Mexican? I hear David Benavidez’s dad talking a lot of s**t but look at what he has accomplished. Nothing. He beat one single champion in Anthony Dirrell. Please. Don’t disrespect me. I have faced the best out there and never ducked anyone.
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