Hunter slams Canelo for his excuses in loss to Mayweather

By Boxing News - 01/21/2014 - Comments

By Dan Ambrose: Virgil Hunter, the trainer for junior middleweight contender Alfredo Angulo (22-3, 18 KO’s), wasn’t having any of the excuses that the red-haired Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-1-1, 30 KO’s) made for getting schooled by Floyd Mayweather Jr. last September in Las Vegas, Nevada. Canelo blamed his defeat afterwards on Mayweather running from him for 12 rounds, and not standing in the pocket so that he could land his shots and use his superior weight advantage.

Hunter thinks Canelo’s excuse shows a sign that he simply had poor planning for the fight, and he didn’t use the right strategy like the one Angulo used in his recent fight against the Mayweather-like Erislandy Lara last year in June. Angulo lost the fight by a 10th round stoppage due to an eye injury, but he had Lara down twice and ready to quit if not for the injury.

Hunter said at today’s press conference “I heard Canelo say Floyd ran from him but Lara ran too. We just had a better strategy and fought smarter. This fight is going to come down to their last fights & quite frankly, ElPERRO82 had Lara.”

Angulo did great job of cutting off the ring on Lara, forcing him to fight instead of run. Austin Trout made the mistake in his recent loss to Lara of staying on the outside rather than using Angulo’s blue print to go after Lara and force him to fight in the trenches where he’s not nearly as effective.

If Angulo is able to outsmart Canelo by coming up with a better strategy, thanks to Hunter, then we might see Canelo get beaten up and stopped in this fight. The Canelo hype might not end entirely with a loss to Angulo, but it would definitely have a lot of the air taken out of it. There’s no question that Canelo fought Mayweather the wrong way by trying to box him from the outside instead of going after him to force him to exchange. If this was Canelo’s idea to fight Mayweather like that then his trainer should have gotten him to switch tactics early in the fight to come up with something different. But if this way Canelo’s trainer’s idea for him to fight like that then Canelo needs a new trainer, because he’s not able to come up with good battle plans.



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