By Dan Ambrose: WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-0-1, 30 KO’s) is reportedly looking for a strength and conditioning coach to help improve his stamina before his September 14th fight against an opponent still to be determined.
According to Fighthype.com, Canelo’s team is thinking about adding either Angel Heredia, the strength coach for Juan Manuel Marquez, or Alex Ariza, the strength coach for Manny Pacquiao.
Whether Canelo can get either of those guys is still unclear, but what is clear is that he needs a conditioning coach to work his stamina because he’s looked exhausted by the 5th rounds in his fights against Shane Mosley and Austin Trout.
Those were fights where Canelo was red-faced and gasping for breath. Canelo lucked out against Trout with the judges giving him nearly every round for the first 8 rounds, even the rounds where he was clearly out-boxed and out-landed.
Canelo knew that he was ahead in the fight due to the World Boxing Council’s open scoring, so he could afford to rest and do very little once the scores were announced in the 8th.
A strength and conditioning coach is a good idea, but I don’t think Canelo will benefit from one because he just seems like one of those fighters that isn’t meant to be more than a 5 to 6 round fighter, and if he can’t get a knockout by then, he’s in danger of getting out-boxed in the 2nd half of the fight.
Canelo’s punch output isn’t good, and unless he has judges that give him rounds based on his harder shots and ignore that he’s being out-landed and outworked for three minutes of every round, he’s going to start having problems.
Not every judge is going to give Canelo rounds where he’s out-hit by a significant margin. It looks bad when a fighter is laboring for breath, turning red, getting outworked and still ebing given rounds by the judges.
Canelo is going to have to try and improve his conditioning, and like I said, I’m not sure if that’s possible. If it’s not, he’s going to have to try harder to get knockouts in the first five rounds because it’s only a matter of time before Canelo starts losing decisions due to him being out-worked in the second half of his fights like he was against Trout last month.
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