In this video interview caught by FightHub, Teddy Atlas talks to reporters about this September's big middleweight showdown between Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin. Here he specifically discusses the timing of this fight being made and why that makes it gives him some pause when making a pick.
"When this fight was talked about a couple of years ago...I was the first one to say that I'd think it'd be a mistake at that moment, if Canelo's people fought [GGG]. They had the goose that laid the golden eggs. And, you know, why put him in the fox house where he could get eaten up and there's no more golden eggs? And I thought it was wrong, I even said, I said 'wait 'til he gets older.' And they waited! They waited, they're pretty smart, those people. I didn't know they were that smart...
"...but now, two years later, maybe [Golovkin], he is deteriorated. He has not improved. You could say that he has deteriorated, he's 34-years-old. You could even say he's been exposed in his last two fights. With Brook and with Danny Jacobs...so this is a guy that's not the hardest guy to hit, not the fastest guy in the world...He's terrific, Golovkin, but he's built his resume — taking nothing away from him — but he's built it on knocking out a lot of middle-aged, european junior middleweights. Now, the last couple of times — he fights a middleweight in Danny Jacobs and man, he has a tough time! And again, he's 34-years-old, we're allowed to dissipate...and I think he's dissipating.
"...the other side of the coin, you've got Canelo, who's still young, what's he 26? He still young, he's getting better, he's shown improvement!...I think it's a much, much closer fight than it would've been two years ago. It's the kinda fight that makes me think now whether or not I still like [Golovkin] the way I did. Because now it's not about being bigger and stronger. Now it's about being older, being vulnerable, uh, being one dimensional. I mean that's what I've seen in him lately!
"But it still comes to that X-factor: power. That Canelo has to diffuse that power, has to avoid that power — probably in the right hand for the most part...he has to be able to avoid that if he's going to win this fight. So it starts there..."