Canelo will have problems landing body shots against Mayweather

By Boxing News - 06/07/2013 - Comments

canelo112By Dan Ambrose: WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-0-1, 30 KO’s) has already given away one of his main strategies to try and beat undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr. (44-0, 26 KO’s) on September 14th and that’s to focus on landing body shots to try and weaken Mayweather for the later rounds.

Canelo and his team must figure that it’ll be next to impossible to land head shots against Mayweather if they make the effort to try that approach. We just saw what happened with Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero last money when he tried to hit Mayweather with body shots for 12 rounds.

Guerrero failed miserably and ended up missing countless punches. For some reason, Guerrero didn’t adapt his strategy to switch to throwing body shots. Guerrero did try to throw body shots, but when he would dip his head to go to the body, Mayweather would nail him with straight rights or left hooks and put him off his game.

Canelo commits to the body a lot more than Guerrero does, and he really sets his feet squarely when throwing his body shots.

Canelo absolutely needs Mayweather to stand in front of him for him to land body punches because he won’t be able to get the job done with Mayweather moving around. Like Guerrero, if Canelo lowers his head to throw a shot to the body, he’s going to get nailed by Mayweather’s faster shots again and again.

The problem with body punchers like Canelo is they can fight this way against fighters that are stationary long enough for them to throw body shots. Guys like Canelo can’t land their body shots against a modern fighter that moves, which is probably why Canelo rarely threw body shots against Austin Trout.

Canelo couldn’t hit a moving target and Trout was mostly standing away on the outside. Mayweather will be doing the same thing on September 14th. Canelo will not be able to land his body shots, and if he tries it from a mile away, he’ll be hitting air and looking silly.

Canelo likes to throw uppercuts and he doesn’t seem to care whether his opponent is close or not when he throws them. It’s a bad habit that Canelo has in throwing them from the outside and if tries that against Mayweather, he’s going to get hit with something. I think Canelo will be able to handle Mayweather’s power but he’s going to get marked up badly in this fight.



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