(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) By Eric Thomas: Floyd Mayweather Jr. (44-0, 26 KO’s) doesn’t acknowledge WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-0-1, 30 KO’s) as being a real threat to him this Saturday night. To Mayweather, Canelo is just another victim for Mayweather to add to his long list heavily hyped opponents that turned out to be little more than just a mirage.
Mayweather Jr. said at the final pressure conference today “September 14th is just another stepping stone, just another opponent for me. But he [Canelo] knows he’s facing Floyd Mayweather. I’m just facing another opponent. It doesn’t matter what’s the game plan. If the game plan is to keep pressuring, I know how to handle that. If the game plan is to box, can’t no body outbox me.”
It’s debatable what Canelo will try and do. In his win over Trout, Canelo got tired and chose to out-box Trout. 5 of the last 6 rounds could have gone either way due to Trout out-working Canelo. If Canelo gets tired like he did against Trout, then he’ll be forced to try and out-box Mayweather.
It’s more likely that Canelo will try and pressure Mayweather the same way that Jose Luis Castillo and Miguel Cotto did. Those are the fights that Canelo has mentioned repeatedly that he was studying, so it makes a lot of sense that he and his team will have used the blueprint in how to beat Mayweather Jr. from that fight.
I doubt that Canelo ever took seriously what his promoter Oscar De La Hoya has been saying about jabbing Mayweather. Canelo had to have seen the longer-armed Robert Guerrero fail at hitting Mayweather with jabs, so that’s probably not something Canelo will try and use.
Golden Boy Promotions has done a good job of managing Canelo’s career in putting him in with just the right guys that would make him look good. In his last fight against Austin Trout, Canelo almost lost that fight. It was close enough to be considered a draw in the minds of a lot of boxing fans.
It’s no surprise that Golden Boy didn’t want Canelo to fight Trout. That was Canelo’s move to push for the Trout fight, and he almost paid for it by losing.
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