Canelo vs. GGG: From the betting angle

By Charles Jay

Canelo Alvarez is consistently a favorite for his Saturday night bout against Gennady Golovkin (GGG). That’s not a secret. But there is some disparity in terms of the odds at which you can wager on either man.

It is not Boxing Insider‘s policy to advertise or promote any individual sportsbook, but we can make note of where the best stuff, the worst stuff and the variety is located.

We did a bit of a survey, like we usually do in advance of big fights, and while the consensus is that you would have to lay 5-1 (-500) on Alvarez, you can get better prices if you dig around. One of the “licensed” books, for example (and there aren’t that many of them) has him at -450, while at a sportsbook that is situated offshore, we have found -440. So if you really love Canelo here, that’s value for you.

But do you like the underdog? GGG has a certain range of prices, the best of which is +430, which is at a licensed book. Generally you can get anything between +350 and +395 on him. That kind of number will be favorable, IF you don’t think he has become too old to compete at this level.

Obviously the first two fights had some controversy about them. Most people – at least most people – felt as if GGG did more than enough to win the first bout, which ended in a draw. In the second bout, you could have made an argument either way.

As for the total rounds, there are sites you can go to where you can wager against any number of different round levels (with differing prices, of course). For the purposes of this article, we will use 10.5 rounds as our basis.

If you like this fight to go some rounds, you can lay a price as low as -200 on the “over” at 10.5. Most of the places we looked at had -210 up to -230. If you like the “under,” you are probably going to see +170 or +175 as the best odds out there.

There are also straight bets you can make on whether the bout will go the entire 12-round distance. We didn’t do a heck of a lot of research when it came to this, but one international sportsbook was showing -150 on the “Yes” proposition. As for the “No” part of it, the most attractive price we saw was +130.

Want to take a shot at what exact round it ends in? And who will be the winner in that instance? If you want to do this kind of thing, just for fun, you’d be looking, for example, at a price of +8000 (80-1) on Canelo and +10000 (100-1) on GGG to end the fight in the first round.

There are “groups” of rounds as well. Sometimes it’s two rounds, sometimes it’s three or even six. At one well-known offshore book, you’ll get a payoff of +650 for Canelo to win between rounds one and six, while Golovkin is +1400 to emerge victorious in rounds 7 and 12.

One of the better ways to wager on a fight (although this story is for informational purposes only) is to select the “exact result.” And what this means is you’ll not only pick the winner, but also pick the method by which the win is achieved. So we’ll use an example for the Canelo-GGG fight:

Alvarez by Decision or Technical Decision +110
Alvarez by KO, TKO or DQ +170
Golovkin by Decision or Technical Decision +600
Golovkin by KO, TKO or DQ +925
Draw or Technical Draw +1400

At those prices, I’ll be going with Alvarez by Decision.

Good luck tonight.