By Dan Ambrose: Like Robert Guerrero, WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-0-1, 30 KO’s) has been after a fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. (44-0, 26 KO’s) for a long, long time, and like Guerrero, the 22-year-old Canelo believes he’s got more than enough talent to beat the 36-year-old Mayweather at this point in his 17-year-old pro career.
Unfortunately for Canelo, Mayweather still has more than talent left in his game to beat the youngster and expose all of his flaws for the world to see when they step foot inside the ring on September 14th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The fight won’t be in Texas at the Alamodome, it won’t have open scoring like Canelo’s last fight, and it won’t be a fight where Canelo can win while outworked. If Canelo can fight better than he did in his controversial win over Austin Trout last month, he’s going to lose the fight.
Mayweather is too fast, too hard to hit, too experienced and much too smart for Canelo to win this fight. Canelo needs a knockout to win because he’s not going to out-box Mayweather. That’s not going to happen. Mayweather isn’t going to stand in close and let Canelo beat him with body shots. That part of Canelo’s game won’t be in use in this game because Mayweather won’t fight off the ropes or stand in one place to make it easy for the Mexican fighter.
In some ways, I think Guerrero was a tougher match-up than Canelo for Mayweather because Guerrero is a lot busier fighter than Canelo and he had the potential to throw nonstop punches. Canelo is a pot shot fighter like Mayweather, but he needs constant rest breaks in order to get his wind. That’s why you don’t see Canelo jump on his opponents and take them out quickly despite having the power to.
Canelo doesn’t want to gas out so he fights in a slow and controlled manner that is fitted with his limited stamina. Canelo isn’t going to beat Mayweather throwing one punch at a time and it’s going to be pretty clear from the first round on that Canelo can’t win the fight unless he lands a big shot and knocks Mayweather out.
Mayweather will have this fight won by the 6th round. Canelo will be flustered, red-faced, exhausted from missing and being forced to fight hard, and he’ll end up giving up in the second half of the fight and end up looking a lot like Carlos Baldomir in his fight with Mayweather.
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