The boxing world got a taste of Gennady Golovkin unfiltered on Tuesday. Speaking to media at his training camp at Big Bear Lake, California, the three-belt world middleweight champ let loose with a rapid fire attack on all things Canelo Alvarez.
"Again with Mexican meat? Come on," Golovkin said on Tuesday, referring to Team Alvarez’s attempt to explain testing positive for clenbuterol in February on eating contaminated Mexican beef.
"I told you, it's not Mexican meat," Golovkin insisted. "This is Canelo. This is his team. This is his promotion ... Canelo is cheating. They're using these drugs, and everybody is just trying to pretend it's not happening."
Golovkin would go on to say that he believes that Alvarez was dirty the first time they met last September when they battled to a draw.
"It was pretty obvious when (Alvarez's) muscles were all (enlarged) ... and with the traces of injections, which were visible," Golovkin said through a translator. "I can talk about Oscar De La Hoya [Alvarez’s promoter], too. He is also not clean. He's dirty."
The Kazakh KO artist would even accuse the Mexican star of popping pills in an effort to stack the deck against him.
"Have a look at the pictures they post when he uses some pills," Golovkin said, referring to YouTube videos of Alvarez taking some pills of unknown origin. "Let him explain what kind of pills they are."
Eric Gomez, president of De la Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions, says that Golovkin’s broadside blasts show fear rather than outrage and that his company may consider legal action in the wake of the aggressive allegations.
"He doesn't sound like a confident fighter,” Gomez wrote in a letter to the Associated Press. “GGG is trying to find a way out. If he doesn't want the fight, he should just say so. Just last week he said the exact opposite. His remarks about needle marks, Oscar and every other lie are outrageous, false and defamatory, and we will deal with them appropriately.”
Could this be the spark that makes the May 5 Canelo-Golovkin rematch explode? Even with tons of money at stake, consistent and aggressive finger pointing from Team Golovkin just may bring in enough do-gooders to either put the fight on hold or call the whole thing off until further investigation can be done about Alvarez’s clean-athlete status. Golovkin said in this same media burst that he’d fight a dirty Alvarez, but that’s not how this works. And if a lawsuit is filed for defamation, expect the big fight to fall apart completely.
There will definitely be more to this as events push forward.