With undisputed world middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin just 1/50 to beat 9/2-rated challenger Kell Brook, the discerning pugilistic punter is left looking for other angles to make a killing from their 02 Arena encounter.
Ordinarily, the under/over rounds betting would be the first port of call, but such is the fearsome punching power of Golovkin (who has ended his last 21 foes inside the distance) and the unknown calibre of Brook’s chin at middleweight, that the bout is 1/2 to be done in eight rounds or less.
The 18/25 about the end coming inside seven stanzas makes more appeal price-wise, but more thrilling rewards are on offer for picking the round in which the winner prevails.
Here Amir Khan’s recent defeat against Saul Alvarez, in which he, like ‘Special K’, stepped up from welterweight to fight a world champion at middleweight, can prove instructive.
Like the boy from Bolton, the game plan for Sheffield’s Brook must surely be to utilise superior speed to land telling combinations on the bigger man while remaining on the move and out of range.
In the case of Khan, it was a tactic that worked well for until into the fifth round, when Alvarez connected with his first heavy shot, cutting the Brit above the eye.
The next round saw the brave challenger’s downfall when, unable to keep up the dazzling speed of his early stick-and-move slickness, he was caught on the chin with the kind of right hand the welterweight division had done precious little to prepare him for.
A sixth-round lights out for Brook at the hands of ‘Triple G’ can be invested in at a handsome 7/1, but there is little doubt that Canelo is nowhere near as big a puncher as Golovkin, while Brook may not be as fast as Khan either.
The Mexican was still fighting at super welter six bouts back and four of his last seven opponents took him the full 12 threes, whereas the man Special K must evade has been putting middleweights to sleep for fun for some time now,with just one of his last 14 foes at the 160lb limit surviving the eighth round.
As such, backing the Kazakh to conclude business sightly more risky than Alvarez did against Khan looks the wisest ploy and the 7/1 he will end it inside five make more appeal.
