Canelo: Guerrero can beat Mayweather with pressure and by outworking him

By Boxing News - 04/01/2013 - Comments

guerrero123By Eric Thomas: WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez thinks Robert Guerrero (31-1-1, 18 KO’s) will beat Floyd Mayweather Jr. (43-0, 26 KO’s) on May 4th if he puts steady pressure on the 36-year-old Floyd and if he is able to outwork him by throwing more punches than him in every round.

It’s obviously said than done because this strategy has been tried by other fighters and it’s always failed, yet it continues to be the plan that many fighters and trainers talk about when explaining how to beat Floyd.

Canelo said to esnewsreporting.com “Be intelligent and use constant pressure. Also, outwork Floyd but with intelligence because Floyd is great at counter-punching. I think with pressure and constant punching Guerrero can win.”

What Canelo forget to add was that Guerrero needs to think about trying not to get hit quite so much in this fight because he’s been wide open in his last two bouts at 147 against Selcuk Adyin and Andre Berto. Those guys were able to hit Guerrero with pretty much everything they threw at him.

They literally could have closed their eyes and still hit Guerrero. That’s how bad Guerrero’s defense was in those fights, and he made it easy for them by standing directly in front of them. Guerrero doesn’t have good mobility, so he’s going to have a problem against Mayweather trying not to get hit.

If Guerrero follows Canelo’s plan then he’s just going to walk forward and get hit with a lot of punches. That might not be a good plan, but maybe it’s the only that Guerrero has got to try and win.

In theory if Guerrero is able to walk Mayweather down, and force him against the ropes, he could work him over like he did Berto. But Mayweather will have to agree to this or be too old to move off the ropes. In the past, Mayweather would only fight against the ropes when he felt he had an advantage over his opponent.

If he felt he didn’t, he would wisely get off the ropes. Guerrero’s pressure will only work if he’s able to get Mayweather against the ropes because in the center of the ring he doesn’t stand a chance. Mayweather is just too fast and too skilled for him when he’s standing in the center of the ring.

Most of Mayweather’s problems in his last fight against Miguel Cotto stemmed from Mayweather letting himself get backed up to the ropes where Cotto was able to land his heavy shots. I don’t know that he’ll do this against Guerrero.

Mayweather agreed with Guerrero that he’d fight him in a toe-to-toe battle on May 4th. Whether Mayweather actually does this or not remains to be seen. He’d be giving Guerrero a possible advantage by doing this, but I have a feeling that Guerrero still wouldn’t be able to do anything with it because of how much better Mayweather is defensively. He could end up blocking most of Guerrero’s shots and hurt him with his counter punching.



Comments are closed.