Trout-Alvarez: Austin in the position to expose Canelo on May 4th

By Boxing News - 02/17/2013 - Comments

trout3By Dan Ambrose: WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (41-0-1, 30 KO’s) is in a position where he’ll have to show whether he can live up to the hype when he faces WBA junior middleweight champion Austin Trout (26-0, 14 KO’s) on May 4th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

This may not be the fight that Golden Boy Promotions wanted for their younger fighter Canelo, but they put him in a bad position when they angled him to face Miguel Cotto. When Cotto got badly beaten by Trout last December, it left Canelo with two options – either man up and face Trout to win the respect of boxing fans or duck him and face one of Golden Boy’s struggling fighters.

Canelo decided to be brave and face Trout, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be a happy ending for the 22-year-old. Trout is still the better boxer by far, he’s still the quicker fighter, he’s still the older fighter, and he’s still the taller fighter.

All Canelo has going for him in this fight is his power, and that’s really not going to be much of any benefit for him because Trout isn’t a stationary fighter, the type that Canelo has been matched against exclusively during his career. Trout also isn’t a welterweight, which is who Canelo has been mostly up against during his career.

This is going to be a big step for Canelo to go from fighting welterweights of marginal talent to fighting arguably the beat junior middleweight in the division in the 27-year-old southpaw Trout. Canelo is going to have to learn quickly on the job because he won’t be able to beat Trout fighting the way he’s been fighting.

This bout has the potential to be a nightmare for Canelo, like a sparring session gone bad for him. It’s a fight that all of his normal skills will be useless for him, and he’ll have to change his entire fighting style if he’s to win.

That’s not likely to happen because he’s more like a smaller Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., and he’s going to need the ability to move around the ring. Chavez Jr. couldn’t adapt, so I don’t expect Canelo to adapt either.



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