ABEL SANCHEZ certainly did not hold back in making his feelings known over Gennady Golovkin’s decision to end their nine-year relationship. 

One of the more respected trainers in boxing today, Sanchez publicly accused the former Kazakh unified word champion known as GGG of being greedy, which given the timing of the split, just after the fearsome puncher signed a mammoth $100 million 10-fight deal with US sports streaming outfit DAZN (“Da Zone”) is hard to argue with.

From his Big Bear, California base, Sanchez revealed that after signing the deal with Da Zone, Golovkin wanted him to take a reduced fee going forward — ie accept a flat rate rather than a percentage of his new hugely inflated purse. Sanchez refused, thus bringing to an acrimonious close to one of the most enduring fighter-trainer partnerships of the modern era.

There may well of course be other reasons why GGG felt the need to freshen things up; and, too, no matter how important or crucial a trainer may be in a fighter’s success, it is the fighter who goes through hell in training camp and risks serious and permanent injury or worse in the ring. 

Yet having said that, it has to count as unconscionable that trainers are not afforded the protection and security of a contract, unlike managers and promoters.

Stories abound in boxing of trainers taking a young kid all the way through the amateurs up into the pros, only for the fighter to move on just at the point when they start making money. This can’t be right, surely. 

The dedication, emotional investment and time that goes into training a fighter is elemental. A boxing trainer is a coach, technician, martinet, psychologist, therapist and father figure combined. When a fighter is riding high the trainer normally gets less credit than he deserves, and when things start to go wrong he gets most of the blame.

But even so, if trainers today think they’ve got the short end of the stick, the trainers of yesteryear had it even tougher.

In his wonderful tribute to the legendary Cus D’Amato, written just after the old man’s death in 1985, Pete Hamill revealed that the man responsible for the development of Mike Tyson into arguably the most exciting and explosive heavyweight there’s ever been “wanted his fighters to be champions, to have money and glory, but he truly didn’t seem to want much for himself … He was a tough, intelligent man who was almost Victorian in his beliefs in work and self-denial and fierce concentration.”

As fine a trainer as he is, Sanchez is no D’Amato. Indeed, who is? But what they and every trainer share is an emotional connection and bond with fighters that is in some respects more intense than the deepest love affair, replete with its highs, lows, euphoria and ultimately pain.

Maybe rather than lament the money he could have made but now won’t with the departure of GGG, Sanchez should take a few moments to see the world as D’Amato saw it: “You can’t want too many things. The beginning of corruption is wanting things. You want a car or a fancy house or a piano, and the next thing you know, you’re doing things you didn’t want to do, just to get the things.” 

As to whose services GGG will seek next in his corner, there are only a few candidates who fit the bill. Chief among them, given the Kazakh’s need to add a defence to his formidable offence, is Virgil Hunter. 

Canelo v Jacobs has all the makings of a classic

Tonight at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Danny Jacobs will reach for greatness when they meet in the centre of the ring in what on paper is a classic “pick em” fight between two of the most skilled middleweights boxing has seen in a long time.

On the line are the WBC and WBA belts currently held by Alvarez and Jacobs’s IBF strap, with the prospect of the victor leaving the ring as unified champion providing even more incentive than normal on such a grand stage.

This incredibly intriguing encounter is yet another coup for Da Zone. The sports streaming giant is currently well on course to dominate sports broadcasting in the US, which when it comes to boxing marks a welcome end to the reign of pay-per-view networks with their exorbitant prices. On this occasion Da Zone is being aided and abetted by Eddie Hearn, Jacobs’s promoter, and Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions, who looks after Canelo, so glow-in-the-dark smiles and Rolex watches all round. 

Unlike the travesty of a dog’s dinner that is Joshua’s upcoming US debut on June 1 — what with his original opponent Jarrell “Big Baby” Miller recently failing a drugs test and his replacement, Andy Ruiz, not exactly guaranteed to get the juices flowing — Hearn can rightly boast that in Canelo v Jacobs he has helped to serve up a proper fight.

But then, Canelo is so good and his skillset so sublime, every fight he’s in is a “proper fight.” Even his one-sided victory over Liverpool’s Rocky Fielding over three rounds last December, which let’s be honest was a public execution, was a compelling spectacle, showcasing the Mexican’s wondrous talent.

He will certainly need to be at his best to overcome Jacobs, whose nickname “Miracle Man” accurately depicts his miraculous recovery from bone cancer in 2011, when it was touch and go whether he would even walk again, never mind fight. A record of 35 wins and 2 losses, one of those to GGG, with 29 KOs is that of a worthy two-time world champion.

Hailing from Mike Tyson’s old stomping ground of Brownsville, New York, Jacobs is super slick with fast hands and, like Alvarez, carries uncommon power. It’s only due to the fact that the current middleweight division is so stacked with talent that he’s yet to receive the acclaim his record and achievements deserve.

Another point worth making is that Canelo and Jacobs are two gentlemen of the sport, proving that talent in the ring need not be accompanied by arrogance outside it. They are a throwback to the halcyon days of middleweight boxing, when such luminaries as Sugar Ray Leonard, Tommy Hearns, Roberto Duran and Marvin Hagler were lighting up the sport.

With tonight’s fight taking place to tie in with Cinco de Mayo (literally “Fifth of May)”, one of the most important dates in the Mexican calendar, commemorating the victory of the Mexican Army against France at the Battle of Puebla in 1862, Canelo will step into the ring with an entire nation behind him, though minus the artillery and bayonets. 

Nation behind him or not, Danny Jacobs will be intent on earning his own place in history tonight. He’s already proved he can beat cancer, so why not Saul “Canelo” Alvarez?