(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) By Dan Ambrose: WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-0-1, 30 KO’s) recently described Floyd Mayweather Jr. (44-0, 26 KO’s) as a two-punch fighter, a fighter that mainly throws jabs and right hands. Canelo also said that Mayweather’s opponents often psych themselves out by making too much out of him before they face him.
I see this as a perfect example of a young 23-year-old fighter that is too confident for his own. There’s nothing wrong with Canelo being confident, but when he’s not even done anything to deserve to be confident, then it seems out of place.
Canelo recently turned down the opportunity to fight on Mayweather’s undercard last May just because Mayweather wouldn’t give him a guarantee that he would fight him in September.
In other words, Canelo, who was then 22, was trying to call the shots with Mayweather. Canelo saw himself as Mayweather’s equal despite the fact that Canelo’s best wins up to that point of his career were against 41-year-old Shane Mosley, Matthew Hatton, a past his best Kermit Cintron and Ryan Rhodes. How do you call the shots when these are the top guys you’ve fought?
In Canelo’s last fight against Austin Trout, he was basically fought to a draw by Trout. I scored the fight in Trout’s favor by a wide margin, but many boxing fans saw that as a draw. I know Canelo’s fans saw it as a win for him, but neutral fans saw Canelo either losing the fight or fighting to a draw. As far as I’m concerned, Canelo proved nothing in the Trout fight. That’s unfinished business.
I think Canelo’s ego is going to get the better of him in the Mayweather fight by making assumptions about Mayweather’s skills. If Canelo believes that all Mayweather has is a jab and a fight hand, he’s going to go into the fight thinking he can walk him down like he’s done against the poor opposition that Golden Boy has fed him.
Canelo isn’t going to realize that a lot of his wins have come against guys that were a lot lighter than him in weight; he’s not going to realize until it’s too late that Mayweather is not the fighter that he thinks he is. If Canelo believes that the only reason Mayweather wins is because his opponents are afraid of him, then he’s going to be overconfident, and assume that whatever game plan he puts together for the fight will work.
I think Canelo is going to be lost no matter what he does in the ring on September 14th. His trainer Chepo Reynoso can come up with a 100 plans for the fight, and Mayweather will adapt and neutralize each one of them on the fly.
I believe Mayweather will show Canelo’s youth and inexperience for the entire world to see on September 14th, and beat him real bad. I think it’s personal this time Mayweather, and he’s not just going to be content with clowning Canelo. He’s going to want to punish him.
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