By Dan Ambrose: If you want to point to the single factor for why WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-1-1, 30 KO’s) was so badly beaten by the undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr. (45-0, 26 KO’s) last night in Las Vegas, Nevada, you might want to look at the fact that Canelo only came into the fight with a 15 pound weight advantage over Mayweather by rehydrating to 165 lbs. after making the 152 lb. catch-weight last Friday night.
Canelo was a much different animal in his last fight when he came in at a hulking 172 lbs. for his win over Austin Trout last April. If you don’t believe that those 7 pounds didn’t make a difference then you’re kidding yourself. A light heavyweight-sized Canelo vs. a super middleweight-sized Canelo are two dramatically different things. There was no way for Canelo to squash Mayweather with his size last night like he’d been doing against the other welterweights he’d been beating because Canelo didn’t have enough size.
It must have difficult for Canelo to trim down from the 170s to fight Mayweather Jr. at 165 for this fight, and I think it led to Canelo being too weak for him to muster up his usual big shots. When Canelo did land his power punches, they had no effect on Mayweather. Why? It’s because Canelo didn’t have the extra 7 pounds of muscle weight on him. When you lose 7 pounds of muscle for a fight it’s going to effect you in a negative sense to where you’re not going to be nearly as strong as you were with that extra weight.
I’m not sure whose idea it was for Canelo to come into the fight in the mid-160s, but whoever it was they cost him his only chance of beating Mayweather. There was no way on earth that Canelo could out-box Mayweather, because he’s not in the same class as him talent-wise. Canelo’s only real chance of winning the fight was for him to come in as heavy as possible in the 172-177 range, and then use that extra size to beat up Mayweather.
Had Canelo come into the fight at 175, he would have had a 25 pound weight advantage over the 150 lb. Mayweather and it would have likely helped him a lot more than coming into the fight weighing just 165 and looking like he’d been dried out. Canelo didn’t look like that when he first started training for the Mayweather fight. Canelo started out looking like he was nearly 180, and he should have trimmed just 5 pounds off to get to 175, and used his size on Mayweather.
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