By Dan Ambrose: WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-0-1, 30 KO’s) is well aware of the advantages that he has in his September 14th fight against 36-year-old Floyd Mayweather Jr. (44-0, 26 KO’s) as far as size and strength goes, and he believes those assets will ultimately carry him to victory in this fight.
Canelo said to RingTV “The difference is that I’m bigger and stronger, and I’m going to construct a game plan with my team so that I can beat him…ready to go in there and win it.”
It’s going to have to be a better game plan than last time Canelo fought against Austin Trout because Canelo won’t be able to count on the open scoring and the inflated scores that he was given by two of the judges for that fight. Those judges won’t be scoring this fight, and open scoring won’t be a part of it.
Canelo was able to do very little in the Trout fight due to the wide judges scores being revealed after the 4th and 8th rounds, and putting him in the position where he didn’t have to really fight in order to win. That’s why you saw Canelo sitting back, throwing pot shots, and moving his head a lot to avoid Trout’s constant jabs.
The wide scores that the judges gave Canelo in the 4th and 8th rounds changed the outcome of the fight. That won’t happen on September 14th. Canelo will have to fight hard if he wants to win the fight, and he’s not going to be quick enough to sit back and beat Mayweather in a pot shot war.
If Canelo tries to beat Mayweather by conserving energy like he did against Trout, he’ll lose the fight. Canelo absolutely has to come right at Mayweather and look to beat him with pressure because he won’t get the job done fighting in spurts the way he did with Trout.
Being the bigger fighter may not help Canelo if he doesn’t have the speed. He can come into the fight weighing in the mid-160s or low 170s, but it won’t mean anything because Mayweather isn’t a stationary fighter. He’s not going to stand there and he’s not going to let Canelo maul him with his size.
It doesn’t matter how big a fighter is, if he doesn’t have the speed to land his shots, he’s going to lose the fight and Canelo is too slow to use his size in this fight. The only way he wins is to fight hard and overwhelm Mayweather with punches, but Canelo can’t fight hard enough because of his limited stamina.
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